


Chronologic

by Purna



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-22
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 07:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1973424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purna/pseuds/Purna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finding the charged ZPM was just the start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Beta thanks to [](http://lamardeuse.livejournal.com/profile)[**lamardeuse**](http://lamardeuse.livejournal.com/). This story was started before _Progeny_. It takes into account and contains spoilers for _Progeny_ and _The Real World_ , but is set before _McKay and Mrs. Miller_.

"The squiggly one next," Sheppard said over Rodney's shoulder. His pointing finger blocked Rodney's field of view, until Rodney batted it away.

"Yes, yes, Colonel, and you're welcome to sit in the next time I have time to waste on Freecell as well," Rodney said absently, as he eyed the carved stone squares that covered the wall in front of him.

"Are you forgetting Dagan, Rodney?" Sheppard said. "Because I seem to remember --"

"Mensa test, yes, how could I forget? But that was a simple mathematical puzzle. How's your Ancient, Colonel?"

"Not bad, actually," Sheppard said with a smirk. "I must be a natural."

Rodney snorted. "You've been studying, you mean. I've seen you reading Dr. Jackson's _Ancient for Dummies_. It's why I'm letting you gawk over my shoulder here."

Ignoring Sheppard's, "Just trying to help out, Rodney," he turned back to the stone squares. The Ancient words carved on the squares were part of a puzzle...and what was it with ZPMs hidden under puzzles? At least this time they didn't have to solve the thing with Genii guns at their heads.

The puzzle was half Ancient acrostic, half crossword, and Rodney had to admit that his progress on the thing had very little to do with his many years of specialized post-graduate education.

"Thank you, Will Shortz," he muttered and pressed the next stone, which was indeed carved with a squiggly symbol. Only in Pegasus could a crossword addiction save the galaxy, or at least supply Atlantis with a fully charged ZPM. That was what he was hoping anyway, and what the cryptic phrases surrounding the puzzle implied.

Rodney finished off the last three stone squares and waited.

"That's it?" Sheppard asked.

"Should be," Rodney answered, not pulling his eyes from the completed puzzle on the wall in front of them. "C'mon, c'mon," he muttered, only half-aware of Sheppard's eyes on him. _Don't let this be another dead end._

A low grinding sound came from the wall, and one of the carved stone squares popped out. When the distinctive, crystalline shape of a ZPM appeared, Rodney let out a sound that was embarrassingly close to a whimper.

"Come to papa, you beautiful thing," Sheppard said as Rodney pulled it from the wall. Even Sheppard's raised eyebrow didn't stop Rodney from cradling it in his arms almost lovingly.

"I find your intense emotional attachment to a power storage vessel mildly disturbing," Teyla said, her tone arch. She and Ronon were keeping watch at the crumbling entrance to the ruins.

"She's doing the joke thing again, isn't she?" Sheppard said to Rodney, staring over at Teyla. "She's kinda scary when she does that."

"Yeah, but it pleases me when she's making fun of you, ' _papa_ ,'" Rodney answered.

"I think she's making fun of _both_ of us, Rodney."

"We done here? Then we should leave," Ronon interrupted. He was wearing his stoic warrior face, but Rodney had been in enough sticky situations with the man to hear the tension hidden beneath the surface.

Rodney nodded. He glanced over at Sheppard, and they both sobered.

"Is it charged?" Sheppard asked.

"Just a second." He attached the leads from the detector he and Radek had finally cobbled together and sat back on his heels. The display showed a flickering line that steadied, and a wave of dizziness blurred his vision.

"Breathe, Rodney," he heard Sheppard say as if from a great distance.

"Full charge," he gasped, trying to quash the hysterical laughter that was bubbling up. "It's fully charged."

*

"This feels almost too easy," Sheppard said uneasily as they made their way back to the gate. "No monks, no ritual child suicide, no Genii--"

Rodney's stomach clenched and he made a shushing gesture at Sheppard. "Aren't you military types superstitious about saying stuff like that, Colonel? And don't tarnish the moment. A ZPM. A _charged_ ZPM. This means we can now get Atlantis fully on-line."

"Is the city not functioning correctly now?" asked Teyla. Her eyes continued to scan the edges of the meadow they were walking through.

Rodney gave a paternal pat to the bulge of the ZPM in his shoulder bag. He'd managed to keep his hands from shaking when he carefully tucked it away, but he couldn't quite contain his excitement.

He looked over at Teyla. "Three ZPMs are needed to power the city, and we've been limping along with just the one. And that one's only half-charged. The city's not designed to run that way; it's like a laptop that's been booted up in 'safe mode.' Only the most basic systems are up and running."

"We'll still be down a ZPM, though. Exactly what cool new stuff are we looking at here?" Sheppard asked.

"Defensive shields that'll last a sustained Wraith siege, for one," Rodney said. "City-wide energy fields integrated with a defense system to help us fight them if they ever invade Atlantis proper."

"Can't argue with that," Ronon said. Warmth lightened his tone, which in Rodney's experience was Ronon's version of ecstatic joy.

"No more power rationing," Rodney continued, lost in contemplation. "Oh, god, no more interdepartmental squabbles about which labs should take priority in energy consumption. I may weep for joy."

"If we can hold off another big Wraith attack with that thing, I might join you," Sheppard said and resettled his aviator shades on his nose, a smirk crossing his face.

"Group catharsis, yes, Heightmeyer would surely approve," Rodney said. "But no hugging."

"I'll try to resist the urge," Sheppard said dryly.

They'd reached the edge of the meadow and were about to enter the heavy shade of the trees.

"Colonel." Teyla was frowning, eyes narrowed. She opened her mouth to say more, but Ronon's shout interrupted her.

"Run!"

Rodney stood there gaping for a moment, stunned, until Sheppard's hand in the middle of his back shoved him into motion. It was all confusion after that, Ronon blasting shots into the trees, Teyla shouting something Rodney couldn't make out.

They were running then, and just in time: a primitive feathered dart thudded into a tree nearby, followed immediately by an energy blast that seared past him, close enough that his skin tingled. Rodney let out a startled yelp.

"Okay?" Sheppard shouted.

 _No_ , Rodney wanted to shout, because getting shot at was the very _opposite_ of okay, by any reasonable standard. But he didn't have the breath to spare for a truly satisfying rant, and so he just nodded his head. For that matter, Sheppard's version of _okay_ meant a general lack of bleeding orifices, and on that front Rodney was way ahead of the curve so far.

He hugged the ZPM tightly to his chest, kept his head down, and ran. Short bursts of a P90, mixed with the Star Wars sound of the energy blasts and the hiss of the darts, almost masked the sound of his own ragged breathing. Sweat was pouring off him, a combination of exertion and stress, and a huge stitch was cramping his side, but he didn't let himself slow down. Physical fitness for its own sake had never interested him, but self-preservation kept forcing him to test the boundaries of his endurance.

"Are they Wraith?" Rodney said between gasps and darted a glance behind them. Sheppard shot him a look that clearly said _How the hell should I know?_ then flinched as another energy blast nearly parted his hair. The frown he shot behind them looked half pissed-off, half mortally offended.

 _If not Wraith, Genii, maybe?_ It was a sad state of affairs that upon being ambushed, they had a list of usual suspects to pick from.

The topography around them was changing, rising beneath their feet. The slope seemed familiar, and Rodney realized they were almost back to the gate. Loose rocks and roots made the footing treacherous.

"Ow," Rodney said. A hard blow had struck his upper arm. It felt like the time he'd been hit by a rock thrown by Celeste Wernicke, who Rodney was sure had gone on to do great things on her prison softball team. He looked down to find one of the darts sticking out from his shoulder, the red and yellow of the fletching obscenely cheery, and his stomach churned.

It churned even more when Sheppard reached over and yanked the dart out.

"Ow, that hurt," Rodney yelled, but the pain of the puncture was fading fast. In fact the whole arm was going kind of... _numb_. "No, no, no. This is not good," he muttered, or tried to, because his lips felt thick and unwieldy and the words came out of his mouth slurred.

"Rodney?" Sheppard sounded angry, angry and worried.

"Shit." Rodney's sluggish foot had caught on something, a root trapping his foot in place while his body twisted around it. Pain flared white-hot through his knee, and Rodney had to bite back a yell. He went down heavily onto his hands and knees, barely avoiding a face plant onto the rocks.

Sheppard's hand was hard on his bicep, hauling him up. Rodney lurched forward, limping drunkenly on his wrenched knee, and Sheppard snaked a supporting arm around Rodney's waist.

Another energy bolt screamed right past Rodney's ear, lighting his nerves up like an electrical shock. Every muscle in his body tried to seize, and he couldn't make himself move a step. His body slipped out of Sheppard's grasp, and he ended up on his knees facing the direction they'd come from.

"What the hell?" he blurted. Movement had caught Rodney's eye, a figure almost hidden in the trees. A short glimpse was all he got, and he wondered if he'd imagined it. He blinked rapidly, and tried to get another look, but saw only trees, their leaves fluttering in the wind.

"Rodney, move!" Sheppard sounded frantic, which was unusual and scary enough to prod Rodney into motion.

Finally, they were at the gate, Ronon moving in to flank their position, sending cover fire back into the trees. "Dial it up," Sheppard yelled, but Teyla was already pressing the crystal keys of the DHD.

The watery blue event horizon formed, and Sheppard was shouting into his radio. "Coming in hot," he said to Atlantis' hail, and then they were hustling Rodney through the gate, half-carrying him. Sheppard's arm was wrapped tightly around his waist, Ronon and Teyla close by on his other side.

Rodney felt like the center of some weird human sandwich when they came through the gate, everyone so close they were almost falling over each other on the other side.

"Raise the shield," Sheppard shouted, his voice tight. "We need a medical team. Now."

Rodney closed his eyes with a sigh. He really, really just wanted to sit down, right there in the gate room, but Sheppard's arm didn't move from around his waist, even when Rodney tried to shift away from his hold. "I want to sit," he said.

His voice sounded almost normal, only a little slurred and higher-pitched than normal, and he felt a flash of absurd pride at the fact. "There," he said, pointing at the steps that led up from the gate room floor. "Let me down."

"No," Sheppard said absently, staring around the gate room like a predator. Teyla and Ronon hadn't relaxed either, stalking the perimeter of the gate room floor. "Where the hell is that medical team?" It wasn't a shout; Sheppard's voice wasn't even raised, but there was a harshness to the tone that made Rodney blink.

Dr. Biro and a gurney finally arrived, and Sheppard eased him down onto it. "Cold," Rodney said around a tongue that felt thick.

His hands were so cold they ached, like when he'd forgotten gloves in the depths of a Siberian winter. A chill shuddered through him, and then his teeth were chattering. Hands were on him, holding him down, tucking a blanket around him. It wasn't the touch he had gotten used to, not the hands of his team, and it made him twitchy. He shoved at an orderly. "No, get off me."

"Be at ease, Rodney. They are trying to help you," Teyla said, a warning in her voice.

"Wait, wait," he managed and fumbled at the shoulder bag. "Radek. Need to give this to Radek."

"Later," Dr. Biro and Sheppard said together, and Sheppard pulled the dart out of a vest pocket and handed it over to Biro. "This was in his left shoulder. Had to be drugged. And he fell on the way to the gate. Did something to his knee."

Dr. Biro's team hustled Rodney's gurney to the transporter. Elizabeth, Sheppard, Teyla, and Ronon followed along in Rodney's wake as he was wheeled to the infirmary.

Carson was in the infirmary when they got there, looking like he'd been called out of bed, rumpled and pillow-creased. Dr. Biro handed off the dart to him and shooed everyone else back beyond the privacy screen.

In the end, it didn't take the two doctors that long, although it seemed longer to Rodney, lying there feeling like he'd been shot up full of lidocaine, wondering what body part would go numb next. After a few whispered consultations and booting up of Ancient medical equipment, and way too much of Rodney's blood getting drawn, and an injection of something--"Has this been tested? Never mind, I don't even want to know"--Carson and Dr. Biro finally relaxed.

"So I'm okay now, right?" Rodney asked anxiously. "I'm not like, paralyzed from the waist down or anything, am I? I feel better. I think I can feel my toes." He could feel his lips again. That had to be a good thing.

"There was a paralytic on the dart," Carson said, rubbing at his eyes. "We were worried that it might interfere with your breathing, but the shot we just gave you should counter the effects."

"If that's it, I need to go then," Rodney said, sitting up, because as much as he liked to micromanage the primitive efforts of the medical establishment in regards to his own irreplaceable skin, _hello, ZPM_. "Whoa," he said, waiting for the room to stop spinning around him.

"Oh, no, you don't," Biro said, and pushed him back down onto the bed. "I still need to look at that knee." She looked over at Carson. "I've got it now, if you want to get back to bed."

Carson rubbed a hand through his hair, yawning, then reached over to pat Rodney on the shoulder. "You're going to be just fine, Rodney. You're in good hands. Dr. Biro here is our orthopedic expert; she'll be examining your knee. I'll just go and let your team know that you're going to be fine."

Carson wandered out of Rodney's cubicle, pushing aside the privacy screen. Rodney heard muffled questions and the reassuring tone of Carson's answers, and everyone ended up crowding around Rodney's bed.

"You look much better, Rodney," Teyla said. Ronon nodded, silent, his lips curled up in a rare smile.

Flippant words about not knowing anyone cared almost left Rodney's mouth. The tightness of Sheppard's expression made him hold his tongue.

"Yeah, the drooling wasn't a good look for you," Sheppard said. The look on his face was a decent stab at a smirk, but he was gripping Rodney's shoulder just a little too tightly.

"Well, we can't all be the drooling champion of P3X-878," Rodney said.

"I thought we agreed to never mention P3X-878," Sheppard said, the familiar interplay easing the tense lines of his face.

"I remember no such agreement," Rodney said.

Sheppard had let go of Rodney's shoulder finally. "C'mon, let's see it." He made a grabby _give it here_ gesture.

Rodney fumbled at the shoulder bag that was still slung around his neck, and pulled out the ZPM. He smiled down at it, cradling it in his arms.

"It's the ZPM we found," he heard Sheppard say to something Dr. Biro had said.

"I see," she said, sounding impressed.

An explosion of Czech came from the door of the infirmary and the sound of running feet and then Radek was there, hands running nervously through his already-wild hair.

"Charged?" Radek reached out, one hand hesitating just above the ZPM's crystalline surface.

Rodney managed a nod, and the triumphant joy he'd felt back on the planet came flooding back. Radek was thumping him on the back, and laughing, and then crooning in low-voiced Czech to the ZPM.

"That is very good to see," Elizabeth said. She had come over to Rodney's bed to stand beside Sheppard. Teyla and Ronon flanked the two of them like heavily armed bookends.

Elizabeth excitement was not quite contained behind a small smile as she turned to look at each team member in turn. "Congratulations to you all. This is very good news."

Rodney felt weirdly like a mother with her newborn, being hovered over by five ecstatic fathers. He started an argument with Radek over which of the dormant labs they'd bring online first just to combat the strangeness.

Dr. Biro broke up the impromptu ZPM appreciation moment, pushing her way between Radek and Ronon. "I need to examine Dr. McKay's knee."

"Ow, what are you doing, trying to amputate?" he said to Dr. Biro as she palpated the joint. He handed over the ZPM to Radek reluctantly.

"Install that without me, and I'll make you wish you'd never been born," Rodney said.

Radek rolled his eyes at him. "Yes, yes, Rodney. You are a very scary man. We all tremble in your presence."

Teyla stifled a laugh at that, making Radek smile at her shyly. He turned back to Rodney. "I will take it to the lab for a full analysis."

Rodney squirmed around, rooting around in his vest pocket for the detector. "Take this, too," he said to Radek, holding out the device. "You can check our calibrations."

Dr. Biro was glaring at him. "Dr. McKay, allow me to examine you, or I'll have the orderlies clear the room and hold you down."

"Fine, fine," Rodney said irritably, but managed to stay still for the next few minutes.

They ended up having the debriefing right there in the infirmary, and Dr. Biro's own curiosity overcame her annoyance at the invasion. It was a little weird reporting to his boss while he was lying in the Ancient scanner without his pants, but not as weird as it would have been before Pegasus and the nearly incestuous social structure of Atlantis.

"And then Rodney solved a puzzle to win the ZPM. It took him longer than I expected, actually," Teyla was saying, and her teasing tone couldn't entirely hide the pride in her voice.

"Hey," Sheppard said, shooting Teyla a wounded look. "I helped, too."

Rodney waved a vague hand at him. "In an annoying back-seat driver sort of way, I suppose," he said to Sheppard, and then looked at Elizabeth. "So we managed to get the ZPM and nobody tried to kill us until _just_ before we made our getaway."

"Not kill," Ronon corrected, lifting the dart carefully from the tray where Carson had placed it. "Stun dart."

Sheppard made a thoughtful noise. "I think the energy bolts were meant to stun, too."

"Were they Wraith weapons?" Elizabeth asked, her lips tightening and her forehead crinkling up.

Ronon grunted in negation. "They didn't move like Wraith. They moved like you or me."

Rodney was about to point out that Ronon's way of moving made most of them look like lumbering oafs, when he froze, mouth hanging open. Ronon's words had triggered something in his memory.

"Oh," he said finally, and then stopped. It had just been a glimpse; he could have been mistaken. The Asurans had made him see and feel all sorts of horrible things. And he'd hallucinated a Samantha Carter on the crashed jumper who had looked and sounded and felt--even tasted, he thought with a flush--real. This time there'd been neither alien influence nor head injury, but his trust in his own perceptions had been a little shaky ever since.

Sheppard was watching him with a curiously intense expression on his face. Rodney shifted under his gaze, ignoring Dr. Biro's admonishing, "You need to be still, Rodney."

"Rodney?" Sheppard managed to sound concerned and mildly threatening at the same time.

Time to come clean. "I thought I saw--this is going to sound crazy."

Sheppard didn't say anything, just raised an eyebrow at him.

"I caught a glimpse of one of them, just before we reached the gate," Rodney said, not meeting Sheppard's eyes. "For a split second. Definitely not Wraith. Human." He stopped then, vaguely hoping that'd be enough.

Sheppard wasn't fooled. "And?"

"Human," Rodney repeated. "And I recognized him." He shook his head and said under his breath, "Or thought I did, because this is just crazy."

Elizabeth looked troubled. "Who was it, Rodney?"

Rodney looked up and met her eyes. "It...it was me."

*

The debriefing got a little complicated after that.

"Perhaps he merely looked like you, Rodney," Teyla said. "You had been drugged, after all."

It was Teyla's most serene tone, but it sounded a little like false comfort. Rodney didn't care, though. He nodded eagerly. "I like that idea," he said.

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. "As attractive as that thought is, we can't discount all the more...unusual explanations." She frowned, steepling her hands thoughtfully. "Could Pegasus have a quantum mirror? I know Dr. Jackson traveled to a parallel universe through such a device, and the Dr. Carter from that universe visited ours. That mirror was destroyed, however."

Maybe he should have anticipated this level of acceptance for crazy-sounding statements. After all the weird shit SGC and the Pegasus galaxy had thrown their way, not much sounded completely outside the realm of possibility.

"Elizabeth, I think--" Sheppard started to say, but Elizabeth's raised hand stopped him.

"We're on the same page, John," she said and spent a few seconds talking into her headset. She looked over at Sheppard after she signed off. "Security teams are on alert, and the gateroom will contact me if your team's IDC is used."

"Good. I don't know if we have a quantum mirror hanging around somewhere, but don't forget that the evil Kirk SG1 team managed to travel into our universe without one," Sheppard said.

"Evil Kirk wasn't a quantum phenomenon," Rodney protested. "That was just a transporter accident, that split Kirk--" He stopped when Elizabeth and Sheppard both gave him the _look_. "Fine, fine, fine. I won't correct your horribly inaccurate analogy."

"Why, thank you, Rodney," Sheppard said, with a flash of a smirk, quickly suppressed.

"You're welcome."

Sheppard's smile faded. "They wanted to steal our ZPM," he said, and his expression turned grim in a way that suggested it would have been over his own dead body.

"Clones." Dr. Biro had looked up from her monitor, apparently wanting to play in the wild theory sandbox with the rest of them.

"Excuse me?" Rodney said. "Shouldn't you stick with, oh, fixing my knee, maybe?"

She ignored him and started going on about clones in such morbid detail that Rodney wanted to run screaming from the room.

Ronon returned to the comforting realm of Teyla's suggestion. He mentioned the perception-clouding ability of the Wraith, and Rodney wanted to fall on him in relief.

Sheppard spoke up. "Rodney, you had to have figured out all this stuff already, but you haven't done anything but critique my Star Trek analogies. You're usually answer man about this stuff."

Rodney shrugged. "I told Radek to change the codes, just in case. But I think I prefer Teyla's idea. Or Ronon's."

Teyla was quiet, watching Rodney with grave eyes. "You find the idea disturbing, don't you, Rodney?"

He felt himself scowling and tried to smooth out his expression. "Wouldn't you?" he asked. "It was bad enough when I found out I'd drowned in the first timeline. But this is worse. A Rodney McKay who'll attack his own team? I don't know who that man is."

The last sentence had come out sounding a little more vehement than Rodney had intended, almost yelling, and everyone went quiet. Rodney ducked his head down, but he could feel their eyes on him.

Rodney tensed when Elizabeth cleared her throat, but she said only, "So when will our new ZPM be installed, Rodney?"

"Soon as I'm done here," he said, nodding down at his knee. The ZPM waiting for him down in the lab was definitely the bright spot in Rodney's souring mood.

Dr. Biro started shooing them all out of the infirmary.

"A moment," Teyla said to Dr. Biro, moving to Rodney's side. She bent over to touch her forehead to his, her strong, calloused fingers gripping his shoulders for a long moment. "Be well, Rodney," she said, sounding almost solemn. It left Rodney flushing and off balance, his throat tight.

When Rodney finally escaped the infirmary and Dr. Biro's evil clutches, Sheppard was there, waiting in the corridor, slouched artistically against one wall. He smiled as Rodney lurched forward on his crutches, and Rodney found himself smiling back.

"How's the knee?" Sheppard asked, his smile dissolving as he stared down at the ugly black brace strapped around Rodney's knee. There was an odd look on his face that Rodney couldn't decipher, and he hoped Sheppard wasn't hovering out of some misplaced sense of guilt. Sheppard always took it way too personally when someone got hurt on his watch.

"It hurts like hell, what do you think? I think I can use it to my advantage, though. I'll make Radek fetch me coffee," Rodney said. Sheppard waited, one eyebrow raised, and Rodney sighed. "It's sprained. No torn ligaments," he said finally, with a certain sense of relief. Atlantis' medical team had a great width and breadth of experience, but Rodney figured orthopedic surgery would have guaranteed a trip back to Earth.

"That's good," Sheppard said as he steered them towards a transporter, his pace slowed so that Rodney could keep up.

Sheppard directed the transporter to the lab level, and Rodney blinked at him. "Radek and I were just going to install the ZPM. You don't need to be there."

Sheppard shrugged. "I thought it'd be cool." He didn't look over at Rodney, but he was back to smiling.

"Oh. Okay," Rodney said, feeling a little flustered. "Sure."

Radek was ready for them in the lab. "Finally," he said, but he looked ecstatic, not impatient.

"Hey! Injured here," Rodney said and waggled a crutch in Radek's direction.

"Our detector is properly calibrated; the ZPM is indeed fully charged," Radek said as he detached it from the scanner.

"Cool," Sheppard said, rubbing his palms together.

"Very cool," Rodney agreed.

They headed down to the ZPM chamber.

They were almost there when Rodney stopped for a moment to massage the ache in his hands. The crutches were tough on his palms, and even as thickly padded as the top pieces of the crutches were, they were already digging uncomfortably into his armpits.

He finally took a look around at the room they'd stopped in. His fingers stopped kneading the palm of his left hand, and he forgot all about the annoyance of the crutches as he took in his surroundings.

Rodney knew this place, and it was a not a pleasant familiarity. A chill raked across his nerves as recognition washed over him.

He turned toward Sheppard, who was hovering right beside Rodney's elbow. He was in Rodney's space, close, too close for anyone else, but after a few years of saving each other's ass, apparently Rodney's instincts gave Sheppard a pass on the personal space issue.

"When the Wraith were in the city--" Rodney's voice was low, and Sheppard ducked his head down to catch the words. Rodney's mouth snapped shut, and he swallowed hard before he continued. "This is where I lost my clip," he said. He was glad Radek had moved a little ahead of them, beyond whisper range. "And then Teyla had to save me."

She had kept quiet about it, at least, sparing Rodney further embarrassment, but he had never forgotten about that moment. The acuity of his memory was something that Rodney usually prided himself on, but it also meant he could relive in excruciating detail the worst moments in his life, over and over. On one level, he supposed he should be grateful to the memory, since it had goaded him into getting more serious with his weapons practice.

Sheppard looked at Rodney, his expression enigmatic.

Rodney had wondered if his admission would be met with instant mockery, but Sheppard just grunted. "Don't worry about it, Rodney. You survived and you learned."

Rodney laughed, one of those loud laughs that made him sound manic, but he couldn't help it. He felt the tightness in his chest ease. Sheppard's words had lifted the heavy weight that made it hard to breathe.

"Huh," Rodney said, staring at Sheppard's face. Sheppard was watching him closely, his forehead wrinkled up. _He's trying to make me feel better_ , thought Rodney, a little surprised by the fact. It was that and the strange look in Sheppard's eyes that made Rodney stare. There was concern and fondness in that look, but Rodney sensed something else there as well.

Rodney was trying to piece together just what that something else was when everything went to hell.

A muffled grunt came from Radek, and Rodney looked over to see him struggling with someone. Rodney's hand instinctively went to his radio. A strong hand clamped down on his wrist, stopping the movement. At the same time his other arm was grabbed as well.

Apparently all the combat training Teyla and Sheppard and Ronon had inflicted on him hadn't been for nothing, because Rodney managed to break the grip on one of his hands. He swung the crutch like a club, trying to sweep the legs out from under his attacker.

His crutch connected with something, and he heard a pained shout, but he wasn't successful in bringing his opponent down. He found himself in a chokehold, an arm clamped under his chin, lifting him off his feet. He writhed in the grip, stomping with his good leg, trying to find the instep of his attacker.

"McKay, stop struggling." He felt and heard the growl at the same time, and his muscles obeyed the command instinctively.

"Ronon?" he heard himself squeak. "What..."

The muscular arm around his throat tightened, and Rodney froze. Ronon shook him like a huge cat with its prey, and the implicit threat was enough that Rodney clamped his mouth shut.

Feeling stunned and a little sick to his stomach, Rodney held himself very still. Blinking in confusion, he looked over at Sheppard, who had his sidearm out and was aiming at--himself. He was shouting and his 9mm was pointed at his duplicate. The other Sheppard in turn was armed with an unfamiliar bulky weapon, which he had leveled on Rodney's Sheppard. Sheppard's evil twin was ragged and bearded, but surprisingly recognizable. He looked, in fact, a lot like Sheppard had looked after the time dilation entrapment.

Beside him was Teyla, too thin and tense as piano wire, her hair hacked off in ragged layers. She had her 9mm out, also pointed at Rodney's Sheppard.

"Teyla?" Rodney stifled a wince at how he sounded, as lost and disbelieving as a kid who'd lost his mother, but Teyla didn't even glance in his direction. It was like one of his nightmares from when he'd first started going off world with the team, but he wasn't going to wake up this time.

He forced himself to turn his head, looking for Radek. Rodney stifled a wince at Radek's bewildered and distressed expression. Rodney hoped he was imagining the hint of betrayal in Radek's face, although it wasn't entirely unwarranted. Radek was being held at gunpoint by Rodney himself. _Not the drugs, then_ , Rodney thought with a trace of hysteria.

The bag containing the ZPM was now hanging from the shoulder of the man holding Radek hostage. _It's me_ , he thought as he stared. _But not me._

It was with a sick sort of fascination that he cataloged all the visible differences between them. His doppelganger was gaunt and restless, little tremors shaking his hands. A scar seamed the jawline on the left side of face. It was thick and ugly, and Rodney got a little queasy when he tried to imagine what had caused it. Whatever it was, it must have laid the skin open to the bone, and then it looked as though the wound had healed imperfectly.

Hooded blue eyes caught his, and the man's lips tightened. He jerked his face to the side as if to hide the scar, and Rodney felt his face flush.

"Does anyone want to tell me what the _fuck_ is going on?" Sheppard's 9mm didn't waver in its aim. His tone was low and dangerous, and it got everyone's attention.

"Lower your sidearm, and we'll tell you."

Rodney almost laughed to hear the other Sheppard use the _let's all be reasonable_ tone that Sheppard pulled when he inevitably pissed off an off world population. It worked no better in this case than it usually did.

"I don't think so," Sheppard drawled. "See, you guys are trying to steal our ZPM. We don't take kindly to that sort of thing around here."

"We are not trying to steal anything," Teyla said. She sounded fierce. "We are attempting to save lives."

She shot Rodney a dark glance, and the simmering anger in her expression shocked him. He'd always thought Teyla's composure was unshakeable.

"Install the ZPM, and Radek dies." The voice made Rodney turn his head so fast the vertebrae in his neck popped. It was Rodney's own voice, shaking and as off-sounding as a recording, but recognizably himself. His words made Radek flinch.

 _It's not my voice_ , Rodney thought. _It's his. McKay's voice, not mine._

"Everybody dies," McKay said, blinking rapidly. "Except us. Radek, Elizabeth, Carson. All dead. 'Everybody's dead, Dave.'" McKay's voice was a creepy singsong, and he was tracing the scar with the thumb of his left hand, over and over.

"Rodney." The other Sheppard's voice was soft and weirdly tender. It snapped McKay out of it. He went quiet, his hand dropping away from his face.

Something about the exchange had caught Sheppard's attention. His eyes flickered between the other Sheppard and McKay.

"We came from the future," Ronon said. He sounded a little impatient. "To change what happened."

"From the future?" Sheppard said, his tone skeptical. "And wait, isn't there some kind of rule against meeting yourself in the past? You blow up the universe or hurt yourself or something?"

McKay's snort echoed Rodney's own, making Rodney stare at him for a moment. "I'm taking this one," he said to his doppelganger.

To Sheppard, Rodney said, "Yeah, that's the first law of time." He waited a beat, then sneered, "In _Doctor Who_ , not in the real world."

The enormity of the situation was setting in, and Rodney sobered. "Entropic cascade failure might be what you're thinking of, but if they are telling the truth, I don't believe we have to worry about it. Not to impugn SGC's expertise, but I've always hypothesized that it was a delayed side effect of using the quantum mirror specifically, not of any generalized 'phase shifting.'" Rodney gave in to the urge to make finger quotes to punctuate the phrase.

McKay let out a stifled laugh that nearly turned into a coughing fit at that, and Rodney shot him a wary look. He raised an eyebrow at Sheppard-- _what's up with him?_ \--but Sheppard shrugged.

Rodney could feel Ronon's move behind him. "Whatever. We came from the future in the jumper. Don't know how. Rodney did it."

Straightening as much as Ronon's grip allowed, Rodney stared over at McKay. "In a puddle jumper? You duplicated Janus' time travel work?" he asked. He stared at McKay in fascination, only half aware of the burst of Czech from Radek. There was envy mixed with Rodney's fascination, but he was trying hard to keep it out of his voice.

McKay flinched and had trouble meeting Rodney's eyes. He nodded, with a one-shouldered shrug. "It wasn't right. I had to make it right." The words came out high and fast, and the tone made Rodney shift uneasily in Ronon's hold.

McKay continued. "Something went wrong after we installed the ZPM. Something happened after that, something that made Atlantis turn on us. It killed them. It killed everyone." His mouth pulled down, and then he ducked his head, blinking rapidly.

"Jesus," Rodney blurted out, and then there was a long moment of silence.

Sheppard's eyes were on McKay. His expression was bland, but his eyebrows slanted down in a troubled line. "All right," he said suddenly, lowering his 9mm. "We put away our weapons, you let Rodney and Radek go, and then I'm ready to listen."

*  



	2. Chapter 2

"You want to tell us why you thought it'd be a good idea to come in guns drawn? Did you even consider just _talking_ to us?" Sheppard asked as they neared the array of doors that led to the conference room.

"You've got Marines surrounding us."

McKay twitched at the other Sheppard's words, and before Rodney could blink, McKay had his 9mm out. McKay's eyes darted about the room, but he wasn't aiming at Radek or Sheppard or Rodney himself. He was aiming at the ZPM.

"Don't anyone try anything. I can't let you have this," McKay said, his tone eerily calm. There was regret in his expression, but no uncertainty, no wavering in either his aim or his determination.

Rodney's stomach tried to turn itself inside out. "Are you suicidal?" he said, his voice an embarrassing squeak, and he could hear Radek cursing. Any bullet would have only a miniscule chance of penetrating the Ancient-hardened surface of the ZPM, but that tiny chance was connected to a hugely devastating result.

"Rodney. Rodney, put that away. It's okay. I didn't mean to startle you." The other Sheppard's voice had the odd tone he'd used on McKay before. The sound of it did strange things to Rodney's insides; he frowned, trying to shake off the feeling.

Teyla had eased up next to McKay. She pressed herself close to McKay's side and placed a hand on McKay's gun arm. "Rodney, there is no immediate threat. Please let me have this," she said, gently plucking the 9mm from his hand.

"Sorry, sorry," McKay muttered, staring at the floor.

"John was merely trying to point out their lack of trust in us," she said, taking his hand in hers and squeezing.

"There's no question about it; you _are_ insane," Rodney burst out with. A blossoming pressure behind his eyes threatened a killer headache in the works. He pressed his fingertips against his forehead, trying to head it off. He spoke, not moving his hands or opening his eyes. "You can't just threaten to blow a hole in a ZPM. The megaton blast would be the least of our worries --"

Radek interrupted, finishing his thought, "You could potentially destabilize the dimensional stability of this universe."

"He knows that. He's not stupid, just desperate. We all are." The other Sheppard closed his eyes for a second, shrugging wearily. Rodney took in the dark bruises under his eyes and the stiff line of his shoulders. The beard almost disguised it, but this Sheppard looked careworn and stressed, the familiar planes of his face lined with fatigue.

Rodney took a reflexive step towards the man but stopped short after the first shuffle of his crutches. He nodded towards the conference table. "Think we could sit?" he asked, his shoulders slumping. He sighed; it'd been a long day.

A fleeting warm touch between his shoulder blades made him jump. He looked over to see Ronon beside him, his hand just moving away. Rodney blinked. Ronon didn't touch him, not his Ronon anyway, unless they were under fire or being threatened by the Wraith.

Ronon met Rodney's surprised stare calmly, a speculative expression on his face. Ronon stepped forward, into Rodney's space, and Rodney felt his face going hot, for no good reason. After a moment, Ronon reached over to pull Rodney's chair out for him.

_Okay_. Apparently some things had changed. Rodney settled into the chair, keeping Ronon under a wary eye.

"We have grown accustomed to a certain way of dealing with things," Teyla said with a frown as everyone settled around the conference table. "We apologize for our lack of finesse."

Her expression remained impassive, flat in a way that Rodney's Teyla only got when things had totally gone to hell. Rodney wondered what sorts of things she'd seen and done for her to think of an ambush as an acceptable course of action, as a mere lack of finesse. He wondered how long it had taken for her eyes to go dead that way and had to shake off a chill.

"How long?"

"How long for what?" McKay asked warily, staring at Rodney, who realized the question had come from him. He shifted in his chair. "How long did it take you to duplicate Janus' work?"

McKay's hand went up to trace the scar again. "Years," he said hollowly. "Four years. Four very long years."

Radek said something under his breath, and then everyone went quiet.

Rodney broke the silence finally. "Why didn't you just take the ZPM before we ever got there? Why the ambush?"

McKay sighed. "That was the plan, actually. We were late. Our navigation system is still a little shaky."

"Attacking my people does nothing to reassure me of your good intentions," Elizabeth said from the conference room entrance. "It's a strange course of action for a team who supposedly knows Atlantis and its people, don't you think?"

"Elizabeth," Teyla said, breaking the silence, her impassive front broken. Rodney gaped; Teyla looked suddenly on the edge of tears. McKay caught him staring at her and glared until he looked away.

Elizabeth moved closer to the conference table, looking in turn at Teyla and Ronon, at McKay and the bearded Sheppard. Rodney's Teyla and Ronon were at her side.

"How did everybody die?" Elizabeth asked. "And why were you spared?" She must have been listening in on the conversation. Rodney had left his comm open, and Sheppard probably had as well. Hostage Situation 101 was practically old hat now.

When no one spoke, Elizabeth repeated the question. "Why were you spared?" Her voice was the one she used for negotiating with the Genii. McKay's face had brightened when he'd first seen her, but the chill in her voice made his expression go tight.

"The Merians. You're going to get a plea for help, if you haven't already. From the Merians." The other Sheppard leaned forward, watching Elizabeth's face closely. "You already have, it looks like."

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes at him and said nothing.

"The Merians asked for help. Dangerous solar flares, civilization at immediate risk, blah, blah. It's a trap. Will be a trap. Was a trap," McKay said and then frowned. "Douglas Adams was right about time travel grammar. Where's your Streetmentioner's _Handbook_ when you really need it?" he said, and he sounded so normal it made Rodney's chest ache. He was still there, _Rodney_ was still there, somewhere inside the scarred, unstable man who made Rodney more than a little uncomfortable.

McKay waved at the other members of his team. "Right after the ZPM was installed, we went through the gate to try to help. The Merians didn't want our help, though. They wanted to sell us to the Genii. We almost didn't make it out of there." McKay's hand flew up to trace his jaw line again.

"Is that where the scar came from?" Rodney asked before he could stop himself.

McKay froze, his lips tightening, and didn't answer.

"We made it back to the jumper," the other Sheppard said, not taking his eyes from McKay. "We got to the gate and dialed up Atlantis." He fell silent.

"And?" Elizabeth prodded.

"Nothing," Ronon rumbled.

"The sequence failed. We couldn't establish a wormhole," McKay said.

"I assume it was more serious than a malfunctioning gate," Radek said, his face pale.

McKay closed his eyes. "The Atlantean gate was gone. Atlantis was gone."

*

After McKay's announcement, the full story came out in fits and spurts. By that time, the members of team Marty McFly had nearly talked themselves hoarse.

They talked about the messages from Atlantis that McKay had found stored in the jumper's computer. First was Elizabeth, tension sharpening her vowels as she asked for a status report. Later was Radek's voice shaking and weak, a warning, a plea for Rodney's return. Atlantis had gone mad, equipment sending out lethal sparks, transporters refusing to release passengers. Their gate was unstable, making dialing out unsafe, and he was considering pulling one or both of the ZPMs. The last message was Miko's voice, breathless and almost inaudible. She was the only one left, she'd said, and the ballast tanks were filling with water. Atlantis was sinking; she was too frightened to risk the gate. She'd been crying.

"If anyone gets this message, tell my grandparents I love them," she'd said.

McKay recited her words from memory, his eyes closed. "And then the message cut off." He rubbed angrily at his eyes with his sleeve. "Damn it."

Radek reached over to rest a hand on McKay's shoulder. McKay tensed, but didn't shake it off. When he looked up, his eyes were still damp. "You need to hear the rest of it."

Without the gate, their return to Atlantis was a tale in and of itself, involving fruitless searching for another _Aurora_ or _Orion_ , and eventually swapping a week of McKay's technical expertise for a scavenged Ancient hyperspace drive and various other parts on what they called "the swap meet planet."

"You retrofitted a puddle jumper for hyperspace travel?" Rodney asked incredulously. "That's --"

"Amazing?" McKay said, his chin going up. Rodney finally understood the negative reaction from people on the receiving end of that particular expression.

"I was going for insane," Rodney snapped. "The shielding alone--"

"We didn't really have a choice, now did we?" Sheppard said, rubbing his temples.

"It took me six months, but it was the best choice. It made perfect sense," McKay said, leaning forward. "I already knew I was going to try to fix things by recreating Janus' device."

Rodney leaned forward as well, snapping his fingers. "His time machine made use of what's basically a hyperspace drive. It's just one more dimension, after all, to traverse time in addition to space."

"Exactly," McKay said, and they were grinning at each other in unconscious harmony.

"Where'd you park it?" Rodney blurted. "I'm guessing you landed on one of the northeast piers. It's pretty deserted out there, and the shield's been a little sketchy since the storm." He knew he was right when the other Sheppard's face went blank. "I want to see it."

"Rodney," Elizabeth said in her best _not now_ tone of voice.

Teyla spoke. "What did you find when you returned to Atlantis? And what of my people?"

McKay froze, his smile dissolving. The other Sheppard spoke up, his eyes on McKay. "The Athosian village was deserted. No sign of culling, though, and most personal belongings were taken. We assumed the _Daedalus_ showed up at some point and evacuated them."

Teyla picked up the narrative. "As for Atlantis, it was as we had feared. The city was gone. The jumper's sensors picked up signs of the city's wreckage, drowned on the sea floor."

Rodney winced, and he and Radek shared a distressed exchange of glances.

Elizabeth was looking thoughtful, a worried frown on her face. "So what's the bottom line here? We can't ever install the ZPM? That doesn't sound feasible."

McKay said, "That's exactly the bottom line," at the same moment Rodney was saying, "We'll fix it."

"Now who's crazy," McKay said, glaring at Rodney. "Something's wrong with it; it killed Atlantis. It's not like you really need it. It's a luxury."

"We don't know that, and if the Wraith attack again, it certainly _won't_ be a luxury," Rodney snapped. "And we can fix it. I know we figure it out. Hello, two McKays, double the genius, double the fun."

The dull thud of something hitting the table interrupted them. Radek straightened up, lifting his head with a strained smile on his face. "Oh, boy, I cannot wait," he said, heavy with sarcasm.

*

They divided the work, with Rodney assigning himself the job of going through the Atlantean computer code line by line. He had a hunch, although he only used the term in his own head. If Radek asked, he'd call it a logical extrapolation of initial observations, and Radek would nod knowingly.

McKay was working with Radek, re-examining the ZPM itself. "No, no, no, that is not possible," Rodney heard Radek say at one point, in that irritated, almost-yelling voice that only Rodney ever seemed to inspire in him.

"It _is_ possible," McKay said. He didn't sound at all irritated; in fact, he sounded as happy as Rodney had heard him sound yet.

Rodney looked over at them to see McKay staring at Radek with a wistful look on his face. "It's good to work with you again, Radek," McKay was saying.

Rodney averted his eyes, staring determinedly at his computer screen. McKay had looked and sounded raw, exposed in a way that made Rodney twitch. It was deeply weird to feel like an intruder in regards to your own privacy.

Team McFly settled uneasily into the routine of Atlantis. The next day Rodney gave his eyes a break from scanning computer code to walk down to breakfast with the two Sheppards and McKay. They got double takes and stares from military and scientists alike.

Radek was sitting alone at a table, communing with his mug of coffee, and they joined him.

"Radek," Rodney said, but Radek mostly ignored them, drinking his coffee down with pleased, guttural noises. "Maybe you and your coffee mug should get a room," Rodney said.

Radek shrugged. "It is good coffee."

Rodney slid the sugar shaker down to the other Sheppard without being asked. His own Sheppard couldn't stomach the mess's gluey oatmeal unsweetened, and he didn't see any reason for the other Sheppard's taste to be different.

"Thanks." The other Sheppard looked a little pinched around the eyes. He stirred the sugar into his oatmeal without looking up.

"I have said this before, but Earth ways often confuse me," Teyla said, sliding in next to Rodney.

"I warned you not to check _American Pie_ out of the DVD library," Rodney said as he tried to pour the exact same amount of syrup in each of the little squares of his waffle.

Teyla shot him a look.

Sheppard cleared his throat. "What do you mean?" he asked Teyla in his _ignore the retarded social skills of my idiot companion_ voice.

"The staring," Teyla said. She raised her eyebrow at an overly curious Marine, who blushed and went back to his food. "Athosians consider it rude."

"Yeah, well, so do Earth people, but good luck making some people mind their manners," Rodney said. He took a bite and then looked at McKay. "Sleep well?" he asked around a big mouthful of waffle.

"Rodney discussing manners, his mouth full of food. Imagine that," Radek snorted. He shot a glance around the table. "Mr. Oblivious, otherwise known as Rodney McKay," he said, waving his spoon and smiling in Rodney's direction.

"Dr. Oblivious, if you please, Radek," Rodney replied.

The clatter of McKay's fork dropping onto his plate interrupted them. McKay picked up his mug, but his hands were shaking so much he sloshed coffee all over the table.

"Damn it," McKay said under his breath, frantically mopping up with a napkin.

"Hey, you okay?" Sheppard asked.

"No, I don't think so," McKay muttered, pushing his chair back and standing. "I've got to...you know." With that, he hurried from the mess, leaving his uneaten breakfast behind.

Rodney slid his own chair back, but the other Sheppard waved him back. "No, eat your breakfast. I've got him."

They watched him leave the mess, and then looked at each other. Teyla took a bite of her melon and chewed thoughtfully.

"Should we?" Rodney said, just as Sheppard was saying, "I think..."

Teyla nodded in relief. "It is settled then," she said, as they stood.

They almost missed McKay and the other Sheppard. They had found a private spot, and only Teyla's Bionic Woman-like hearing led them to the secluded alcove the two men had ducked into. Rounding the corner, Sheppard and Teyla stopped in their tracks, and Rodney bumped into them, teetering on his crutches until Sheppard reached out a steadying hand.

"I can't do this. I can't do this," McKay was saying. His voice was muffled, his face pressed against the other Sheppard's chest. Their arms around each other, they seemed unaware that they were being observed.

"You can do this. I know you can," Sheppard said. He leaned in, tilted his head and his lips met McKay's. A kiss, easy and familiar, a married sort of kiss, Rodney realized. "You can do this," the other Sheppard repeated, pulling back from the kiss.

Rodney's good knee was a little shaky, and he shifted to keep his balance. The creaking of his crutches made the other Sheppard look up. When he saw them, he didn't try to untangle himself from McKay; he barely moved, stiffening a little. He narrowed his eyes at them, his stare a challenge.

"Oh," Sheppard said, his voice low. There was something in Sheppard's voice, but his face had gone carefully blank.

Sheppard shot him a quick look. "Rodney?" he said. It might have been the unsteadiness of his voice or the wistful, self-deprecating twist to his mouth, but it was then Rodney figured it out. _Oh, jeez, this is big, this is real_ , and Rodney tried to swallow his panic down.

Rodney couldn't look at Sheppard, couldn't even face the gentle look he knew was on Teyla's face. His brain was stuttering along like a broken toy, and that was just unacceptable. "I need," he stuttered. "I need to get to the lab," he said and fled as fast as his crutches could carry him.

*

"Radek, anything on the ZPM yet?" Rodney asked, looking up from the soothing monotony of lines of code. He stretched, and the ache in his lower back flared, making him hiss. Maneuvering on crutches wasn't just trashing his hands; it was wreaking havoc on his back as well.

Radek looked up from his workbench, his hair a wild halo around a pale face. "Nothing. Nothing that could destroy--" Radek stopped, glancing over at the other side of the room where McKay sat at a workstation, searching the Ancient database. He lowered his voice and continued, "Nothing unusual at all about it, Rodney."

"Hmmm," Rodney said, and paused his display. He scrolled back a page, and went through more slowly, tapping the screen.

"Something?" Radek asked, his head still bent over the ZPM.

"When the other team talked about what happened on Atlantis," Rodney said slowly, still scanning the code. "Before the, uh, very end, I mean. Equipment turning on people. Transporters refusing to work. It sounded familiar."

Radek raised his head, his eyes widening behind his glasses. "The _Daedalus_. The Wraith virus."

"Bingo," Rodney said, turning the tablet so that Radek could see the translated lines of Wraith code.

Radek closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. "The Wraith worm that was sent in the data burst. But we thought it did nothing more than probe for data that it sent back to the hive ships."

Rodney tapped the screen. "Obviously, we were wrong. The virus appears to be targeting the sections of code that control Atlantis' integrated defense system."

He ticked points off his fingers, as he said, "The new ZPM gets installed. There's enough power to fully power the defense system, and bam. The Wraith virus has control of Atlantis' brain, control of its defenses. It could make Atlantis turn on us."

"There was no Wraith code when we checked the system before," Radek said. "We went over it with a fine-toothed comb."

"I know," Rodney said, frowning and rubbing his chin. "It must have been more subtle than we thought, able to hide itself in one of the subsystems. Somewhere we didn't check. Stupid, stupid," he said, thumping his forehead.

"I can do that for you, if you wish, and harder, no doubt," Radek said impatiently. "You've identified the problem. We are in no immediate danger. And you've dealt with a Wraith virus before. Easy as pie, yes?"

Rodney sighed. "I had Hermiod's help last time. But, sure, easy as pie," he said thoughtfully.

"Wouldn't Radek have caught that?" McKay's voice made Rodney jump. He hadn't heard the man approach. "My Radek, I mean," McKay added, flashing Radek a brittle smile.

Radek grimaced in sympathy and shrugged. "I don't know. I was not present for what happened on the _Daedalus_. Perhaps we didn't figure it out until too late."

"Hmm," Rodney said.

They worked late that night. Radek finally left to go to dinner, and the other Sheppard stopped by the lab right after that. He waved at Rodney and moved over to talk to McKay.

Rodney kept his head down, pretending to scan code. When he looked up, nothing about them looked out of the ordinary. Sheppard stood close to McKay, but not that close. They weren't touching or holding hands. They looked like friends, nothing more.

_But friends don't kiss like that_ , Rodney thought and heat rushed to his face.

McKay let himself be talked into taking a break. He and the other Sheppard left together, and Rodney took a deep breath.

He forced himself to concentrate on his work and succeeded so well he was startled when someone spoke.

"Zelenka said you were still working in here," Sheppard said from the door. "Wraith virus," he added. "Déjà vu all over again."

"Huh? Yeah, kind of," Rodney muttered. "Luckily, it's not spreading like the one on the _Daedalus_ ; this one's just hitting Atlantis' defense system. Until that's fully online, which it won't be as long as we're down to one ZPM, we're safe."

"That is good to know, Rodney. We thought you might need a break. We brought dinner," Teyla said.

"Right now, we're working on a program to strip out the virus," Rodney said, waving at his computer screen. "It shouldn't be too hard. This one isn't like the last one. It's almost too easy."

"Maybe it's just a different strategy," Sheppard said, sliding a food tray onto Rodney's workbench. "It's meatloaf. Wouldn't want you to faint from manly hunger or anything."

"Different strategy, yeah," Rodney said slowly, not yet taking in Sheppard's jibe. When he did, he rolled his eyes, and then the food smell hit him.

"God, I'm starving," Rodney said, his stomach growling. He dug in, ignoring Sheppard's smirk.

Teyla hopped up on Rodney's lab table. "We were going to bring Dr. McKay a tray as well, but Colonel Sheppard said he'd take care of it."

"Yeah," Rodney said, stretching out the word. "They just left," he said, and then his nerves made his mouth run faster than his brain. "We're--they're obviously close. Really, really close."

Teyla cut him off. "Rodney," she said, her tone a warning. She had the impatient expression that she often got when the discussion of sexual topics came up.

"What? I mean, I'm just saying," Rodney said, trying not to sound weird about it, but the look on Teyla's face said she wasn't buying it.

"They have been alone for a very long time," she said quietly. "They find comfort with each other. You may deny yourself that comfort, but do not begrudge your counterparts."

Teyla sounded earnest, her eyes moving from his to look deliberately over at Sheppard. Resting a hand high on his shoulder for a moment, her thumb skimmed a quick and light brush over his neck, right above the jugular.

She gave them a grave nod. "I must go, Rodney. John."

Sheppard's gaze was darting between Rodney and Teyla, a faint blush rising over his cheekbones. After one last squeeze of Rodney's shoulder, Teyla left them.

Rodney tried not to blush himself when Sheppard's stare didn't move from his face, but he'd never had much success with hiding his emotions.

"It bothered you, seeing them like that," Sheppard said without preamble. Rodney fiddled with his fork, his heart starting to race. _That's not what bothered me_ , he wanted to say, but he couldn't make his mouth form the words. _I'm not ready for this. It's not fair; I didn't know._

Sheppard hadn't sounded angry before, but when Rodney didn't say anything, Sheppard's eyes slid away from Rodney's, to stare past Rodney's shoulder. "Canadian tolerance evaporates when it's your ass on the line, does it?"

The words were bitten off and sharp, and there was something resigned in Sheppard's posture, as if he already expected the worst.

_He's had this talk before_ , Rodney thought suddenly. He tried not to feel offended, on multiple levels, at Sheppard's assumptions, Sheppard's secrecy. This was big, this was huge, and Sheppard had said nothing.

"It's not that," Rodney said sharply. "Don't be stupid." He shoveled food into his mouth to emphasize the point.

Sheppard ignored him, and his voice matched Rodney's for sharpness when he spoke, "If this means you're going to have a problem working with me--"

Rodney swallowed his meatloaf and said, "Quit being an ass, Sheppard. You don't know what you're talking about."

Sheppard's eyes weren't meeting his, and Rodney's breath caught as he realized that Sheppard was staring at his mouth, not even trying to hide it. His flat expression had cracked open all to hell, and the ache was written in his face, in the tightness of his eyes.

It tied Rodney's chest into knots, made him forget about trying to stall Sheppard until Rodney had dealt with his own shaky mess of emotions.

"Look," Rodney said, closing his eyes. "Before this, I never really thought about it." He stopped, wanting to be honest. "Okay, I might have thought about it, but not seriously. It's not like I ever did this before. And now, we're all tangled up with each other, and I've never...felt like that." He took a breath. "Ever. Like I'd die for you, and sometimes I don't even know where to put it all, and it's already--"

"Too much?" Sheppard asked, and Rodney almost wished he had sounded angry, because Rodney could have handled that.

"Yes. No. I don't know," Rodney said desperately. "I don't know. I don't know if I can do this, feel this." He closed his eyes. "It scares me," he blurted out and then winced. He hadn't meant to say that, hadn't wanted to sound so vulnerable.

"Oh," Sheppard said, softly enough Rodney almost missed it. Sheppard was silent for a long stretch, no talk, just watching Rodney.

Rodney frowned, suddenly unsure of himself in the midst of all their careful ambiguity. "So you really--?"

Sheppard nodded, reaching over to lightly cuff the side of Rodney's head. His taut expression eased just a little as he said, "Yeah, doofus. I do."

*

"So the anti-virus program is finished?" Elizabeth asked, finishing up the quick briefing she'd called.

"Yes, Elizabeth," Radek said when Rodney didn't answer immediately. "It actually did not take as long as we thought it might. The virus does not appear to be nearly as sophisticated as the one Rodney dealt with on the _Daedalus_. We will start running it after you give the okay."

She nodded, her eyes narrowing in thought. "And we'll be able to install the new ZPM when you're done?"

"Yes," Rodney said, pointedly not looking at McKay.

McKay frowned and took a deep breath, but said only, "A cautious yes, I'd say."

"Excellent. Keep me updated," Elizabeth said with a nod. "That'll be all." Her eyes met Rodney's, her head tilted in a wordless request for him to stay behind.

When Radek and McKay had left the room, she spoke again. "Rodney, before I forget. Our time-traveling guests--they seem well?"

Rodney hesitated. "As well as might be expected. They're all jumpy as hell, and McKay--" He shook his head. "Nice to know I'm one apocalypse away from, what's the word?" He whistled, circling his ear with a forefinger. He looked over at her, crossing his arms across his chest a little defiantly.

"Rodney." It was almost too soft to hear. Elizabeth's expression didn't alter, not at all, but Rodney knew what he'd see if he looked in her eyes, that look that saw right through him.

She cleared her throat. "Perhaps he'll have the opportunity to recover his mental equilibrium once he and his team return to their own restored Atlantis."

The frown on Rodney's face stopped her. "What is it?" she asked sharply.

"Elizabeth," he said, rubbing at his temples. "I thought you knew."

"Knew what, Rodney?" she asked.

"That they won't be returning to a restored Atlantis," he said. "They can't. "

"Explain," she said. He had surprised and disturbed her; the curtness of her demand showed that much.

His mouth twisted; she wasn't going to like his answer. Hell, _he_ didn't like his answer. "There is no Atlantis for them to go to. Not one where they belong, anyway."

She shook her head. "I don't understand, Rodney."

He took a breath. "Elizabeth, the instant they changed things here, they caused a quantum forking event, a branch in causality. They can save Atlantis for us, but in doing so, they create a parallel quantum universe, one identical to theirs up to the point they interfered. In our universe, Atlantis is saved. In theirs, nothing has changed."

"Parallel universes. I didn't realize." Elizabeth closed her eyes for a moment, then she opened them suddenly. "Are they trapped here?" she asked, her voice rising.

"They can still use their time machine, so not really," Rodney hedged.

"I hear a 'but' in there, Rodney," she said.

"They can travel to our future, but _we_ ," he gestured between the two of them, "will already be there. We could probably figure out a way to return them to their own quantum universe, but there'd be little point in doing that. Nothing would have changed there. Atlantis will still be gone in that universe."

Horrified realization was dawning on Elizabeth's face. "But--"

"I know," Rodney said tiredly. "McKay had to have known. I'm sure they all knew."

She took in a breath, crossing her arms across her chest. "They'll be welcome to stay here," she said cautiously then stopped short. "Always a little out of step with our world. Forever reminded of all they've lost," she added with a sigh. "No true home, and no hope to ever have one again."

"Yeah," Rodney agreed, pressing on his eyes with the heels of hands. "They're left with nothing, and yet they still came back to save us." He sounded brittle and shaky even to himself.

Talking about this meant thinking about it, which he'd happily been avoiding until now. It meant confusion, all sorts of emotions tangling together: anger and sadness and a mixture of pride and affection so intense it burned.

"They've lost everything," he said with a strangled laugh. "They've got each other. Nothing else."

It was that last thought that stayed with Rodney long after he left Elizabeth for the lab.

*

"We need to talk," Rodney said when Sheppard's door finally opened. Sheppard was squinting even in the dim light and looked disheveled and half asleep. Rodney shot a guilty look at his watch, realizing just how late he'd stayed thinking and trying to work in the lab after Elizabeth's briefing.

"Yeah, most normal people are asleep right now," Sheppard said, but he didn't sound angry. "C'mon in." He waved Rodney into his quarters and flipped on the desk lamp. He raised an eyebrow when Rodney crutched over to stand right next to him, and then rubbed at his eyes.

"What's up, Rodney?" Sheppard asked, cracking a huge yawn.

"Did you? Do you?" Rodney said, and then, "Ah, hell." Letting his crutches clatter to the floor, he reached out with both hands and pulled Sheppard's face to his.

"Mmmph," Sheppard sputtered before Rodney's lips shut him up. There was a moment of resistance, Sheppard tense against Rodney's grip, his mouth unresponsive, and then Sheppard was kissing him back.

Rodney had expected it to be different from kissing a woman, and it was, Sheppard's mouth bigger, his face pricklier. He'd anticipated the slight height disadvantage, but he hadn't quite expected Sheppard's strength, and the ease with which he took control of the kiss. But it was exactly the same in a lot of ways: warm breath and wet, strong tongue and low appreciative noises.

And then Sheppard was gripping his biceps, pushing him back, saying, "Wait, wait."

"What?" Rodney asked defensively, his breath coming hard and fast. "I may not know what the hell I'm doing here, but that felt pretty good to me."

Sheppard was staring at him, his pupils wide and dark. He shook his head. "Let's. Let's just sit for a second, okay?" He steered them over to the bed, frowing.

They settled on the bed. The sheets were still warm, Rodney noted with a little shiver, and then Sheppard's frustrated sigh made him look over.

"What's with the change of heart?" Sheppard asked.

Rodney kept silent. He'd had long silent hours to think in the lab, and the path of his thoughts wasn't something he felt equipped to explain. McKay and his team, McKay and his Sheppard. How they'd seen so much loss in Pegasus, and so many threads of himself were already woven with his team, with Sheppard.

"You matter," he managed to say and then shrugged helplessly. It was almost overwhelming, to have so many people _matter_.

"I guess I figured it out." Rodney finally said. "It's not too much. I mean, I'm still scared out of my mind, but I want that. I want you." Blunt and clumsy, and he hadn't meant to say it that way, but he'd never been good at the whole mating ritual thing.

Sheppard didn't laugh. He didn't say anything. He was staring down at his hand, which rested on the bed covers.

Rodney waited for a reaction, but there was none. He shifted impatiently. They usually managed pretty well at saying things without really saying things, which was convenient, but he was at a total loss on this one.

"So," Rodney said finally, leaning in close, nervous but determined to bluster through. "I'm no expert at the guy thing, but it'll be hard to have sex if you're over there."

Sheppard looked up at him, one corner of his mouth quirking up. "You think?" He was staring at Rodney's mouth again, and his expression belied the flippant response. "You're sure you want this?" he asked, hope warring with caution in his voice.

Seeing Sheppard like this, defenses down, was weird and warming at the same time. It felt like a gift, or maybe a burden, but it was one Rodney was glad to share, and all the nervousness melted away.

"Don't be an ass. Yes, I'm sure." Rodney reached over and smacked the side of Sheppard's head. "And that's for calling me a doofus, doofus."

"But you _are_ a doofus," Sheppard said, smacking him back.

Rodney hadn't realized that a slap fight could substitute for foreplay, but there was a first time for everything, he supposed. In the darkness, they settled themselves higher on the bed, and the wrestling and poking slid seamlessly into long, exploratory kisses.

He still wasn't sure about the whiskery rasp of unshaven cheeks against his skin, but he couldn't get enough of Sheppard's mouth. Sheppard tasted faintly of toothpaste and desperate hunger, and his slacker coolness deserted him in bed.

On their sides facing each other, hands and mouths wandered. Sheppard was hard and hairy and radiated a comfortable sleepy warmth through the thin shirt and boxers, and _damn_ he seemed to know exactly where to touch. Rodney felt constricted, over-dressed, and he made a sound against Sheppard's mouth.

"Let me...get this off," he gasped, fending off Sheppard's groping hands for a second to pull off his uniform jacket.

Sheppard yanked it out of his hands, throwing it carelessly to the floor. Rodney wrestled with his shoes and socks, and then Sheppard was all over him again, touching and exploring. It was a total ego stroke to see Sheppard trembling with eagerness for him. Rodney barely remembered the last time someone had been that excited to have sex with him, back in undergrad probably, both of them hopped up on adolescent hormones and new freedom.

_How long has he wanted this?_ Rodney thought a little wildly when Sheppard started sucking on his throat, making noises that Rodney usually reserved for Rocky Road ice cream. Sheppard's hand cupped him, making Rodney's breath catch almost painfully.

"Oh, god," Rodney gasped as Sheppard's strong fingers moved on him, exploring him as much as he could through the cloth of his pants. Sheppard's hand moved up Rodney's body, sliding up Rodney's ribs, detouring to slide under Rodney's T-shirt, tweaking a nipple.

Rodney made a low sound in the back of his throat, and then pulled away. Taking in a breath, he reached down for the hem of his T-shirt, tugging it over his head. He tossed it aside, hands tangling with Sheppard, who was already reaching for him again.

"Yeah," Sheppard breathed, skating a palm up the center of Rodney's chest. Sheppard's other hand moved to Rodney's cheek, and he dove back into the kiss. Rodney'd had vague notions that guys didn't tend to kiss all that much, but Sheppard shot that idea down. He obviously liked it, and he was very, very good at it, mixing it up a little. He went in deep and wet and nasty, but then pulled back to gently press his lips against Rodney's, skating a finger up Rodney's jawline.

It was kind of weird when Rodney's hips pushed against Sheppard's, two hard cocks in the picture instead of one. But his hips kept thrusting against Sheppard's instinctively, and his gasp was swallowed up in Sheppard's mouth.

The wet sound when Sheppard pulled away from the kiss was dirty and hot, igniting a flare of want in Rodney's belly. Even hotter and dirtier was Sheppard whispering, "I wanna suck you," his warm breath right in Rodney's ear.

Rodney managed a whimper and then an enthusiastic, "Oh, please, yeah."

Sheppard pulled away. The sound that came out of Rodney's mouth was embarrassingly close to a whine, but Sheppard didn't seem to hear, pushing him back on the bed, his fingers frantically working at the fastening of Rodney's pants.

Rodney batted at his hands. "The brace, the brace," he said.

"Fuck," Sheppard muttered. He moved down to Rodney's knee to fumble at the brace's fastening. The rip of the velcro was astonishingly loud, and then Sheppard was peeling it off him.

Rodney tore at the fastening of his pants, and Sheppard helped him ease his pants and boxers down and off. Sheppard was already sliding down between Rodney's legs when Rodney stopped him by grabbing a handful of T-shirt.

"C'mon, take this off," Rodney said in a voice that didn't sound like his own, breathless and raspy through lips that felt swollen from all the kissing. "I want to see you."

Sheppard looked up at him, a lopsided smile spreading over his face. "Sure," he said, sounding a little surprised, and shed his boxers and T-shirt so fast Rodney almost laughed.

"Oh," Rodney said. He reached out tentatively, glancing up at Sheppard. An eager nod prompted him to touch, low on Sheppard's belly, moving his fingers through the dark hair there.

A shudder racked Sheppard, his breath coming faster. Rodney was just getting into it, the warmth of skin, the scratch of hair under his palm, when Sheppard trapped his hand. Sheppard laughed at Rodney's little disappointed sound, and pushed him gently backwards.

Rodney leaned back a little, resting his weight on his hands behind him, and stared at Sheppard. Long and lean and naked, he knelt between Rodney's legs. It all struck Rodney suddenly then, like a punch to the gut, a rush of strangeness that made him blink. He was in bed with Sheppard, hairy and unmistakably male, his cock bobbing out from his body.

"Okay?" Sheppard asked, sliding his hands up Rodney's legs, his thumbs tracing the sensitive skin of his inner thighs.

Rodney could only nod, head bobbing like dashboard toy. He couldn't look away, staring down as Sheppard leaned in, swallowing him down in one smooth motion. _Thank you, jesus_ , was Rodney's instant thought, as the first suck pulled a strangled groan out of him.

He didn't last very long, Sheppard's hot mouth pushing him over the edge in an embarrassingly short time. He was broken and pieced back together again, quicksilver heat and wet mouth, and the top of his head trying to come off. "Oh, god," he moaned as he came. Sheppard didn't pull away, swallowing it down, drawing a final shiver out of Rodney.

"That's good. You're--really good at that," he said. His arms gave out, and he flopped back to lie on his back, sucking wind like a sprinter, strung out and limp.

Endless seconds later, he'd recovered enough to nudge at Sheppard with his good knee. "Come up here," he said.

Sheppard smiled and settled on top of him, a solid weight pinning him to the bed. It gave him a claustrophobic twinge but then Sheppard's mouth came down on his, urgent, almost biting. Sheppard's hard cock, unbearably hot, eager, was poking his thigh.

"I love your mouth," he whispered into Sheppard's ear. "Do you want..." He trailed off, not quite ready to offer up what would no doubt be a painful attempt at a blowjob, and then Sheppard was capturing the hand that he tried to slide between them.

"No," Sheppard said in a shaky voice, shoving himself against Rodney's hip. "Just like this. This is good." Sheppard punctuated the word with a thrust into Rodney's thigh. He sucked on Rodney's lower lip, rutting against him, faster and faster. "Rodney," he said, the syllables broken with a groan, and then he was coming.

It didn't sound at all erotic, having someone come on him. But it was, almost painfully so, hot spurts of Sheppard's come slicking the space between their bodies. There was a renewed stir of mild interest from Rodney's cock, but he was too tired and strung out for anything more than a quick flicker of heat over his nerves.

Sheppard was draped over him like a heavy, breathing blanket, which felt great for about ten seconds.

"Uh," Rodney said, trying to shift under Sheppard's weight. "Could you..."

Sheppard rolled off him with a sigh. He fussed at getting the sheets and covers straightened out. Then he settled on his side, tucked up right next to Rodney, and fell asleep.

"We should clean up a little," Rodney said, elbowing Sheppard.

Sheppard grunted and swiped at Rodney's stomach with a corner of the sheet.

Rodney shrugged. "Suits me," he said, and let his eyes drift shut.

He woke a few hours later, a little sticky and sore. He wondered if he should get up and head back to his own quarters, but Sheppard had him half pinned to the bed, bony and lean, male.

He'd slept with Sheppard. He'd slept with his friend, his very male friend, but Rodney suffered only a tiny pang of sexual identity panic at the thought. Because it was Sheppard, his Sheppard, and that was more important than the discovery that Sheppard's skinny body was as much a part of his sexual happy place as a woman's smooth curves.

_Can't move_ , he thought, telling himself he could always panic later. He slid his good knee between Sheppard's thighs and let himself drift back under.

"Wake up. McKay, wake up." Blinding light and a deep voice penetrated Rodney's warm blanket of sleep, and his hand went instinctively up to his earpiece to touch bare skin. He remembered ripping it off at some point during the night, the diversion of blood to his dick apparently crippling even to as brilliant a mind as his.

"Put it away, Sheppard," the deep voice said, and everything clicked into place again. He was naked and tangled up in Sheppard's sheets, and Sheppard himself was somehow blinking sleepily and yet tense and focused at the same time. He was arched over Rodney like a cat with his back up, aiming his 9mm-- _what, did he pull it out of his ass?_ \--at whoever had walked in on them.

Rodney blinked up at the intruder, whose features resolved into the other Ronon, unmistakably feral, as edgy as Rodney's Ronon had been when he'd first settled in Atlantis. Rodney breathed a sigh of relief when Sheppard finally eased up on the hair-trigger reflex schtick and slid the 9mm out of sight somewhere.

"Jeez, we're _naked_ here, Ronon," Rodney said. He belatedly tugged the sheet over himself, wincing at how high and shaky his voice sounded. "And how the hell did you get in?"

"Rodney's taught me a few things," Ronon said, sounding smug. "And it's nothing I haven't seen before."

Rodney clapped his hands over his ears. "Shut up, shut up, way too much information there, my Hulk-like friend."

Ronon scooped up a pair of pants from the floor and threw them at Rodney. "Get up and get dressed. Quick. Rodney sent me. We've got a problem."

*

"What took you so long--oh. I see." McKay had started talking the instant Rodney and Sheppard entered the control room, but he stopped short after a quick, knowing glance that darted from Rodney's mouth and neck over to Sheppard. Rodney tried not to blush, tugging his collar up in a futile attempt to hide the marks that advertised what exactly they'd been up to. They'd washed up as best as he they could with Ronon breathing down their necks, but they probably still reeked of sex and sweat.

McKay wasn't even paying attention, though, glaring at Radek, whose face was set in a stubborn frown. "Tell Radek we need to pull Atlantis' defense system computer. He doesn't trust me enough to do it without your okay."

There was an expectant pause, and then McKay snapped his fingers in a peremptory way that raised Rodney's hackles. "C'mon, get with the program. This is an emergency," McKay said, his voice rising.

"What? What are you talking about?" Rodney asked, and if he sounded cranky and shrill, he thought he could be forgiven. He'd been dragged naked out of a nice, warm bed by _Australopithecus rononii_ , nixing the prospect of hot morning sex, all to deal with Atlantean life or death moment #309. On crutches, no less.

"Look at this," McKay said, impatiently thrusting a tablet into Rodney's hand. Rodney awkwardly juggled with it, until he shifted one hip onto a console, propping the crutches beside him.

"Wait, what am I looking for--oh, crap!"

"That's not something we like to hear, Rodney," Sheppard said, trying to look over Rodney's shoulder. "What do you mean, _oh, crap_?"

"This is just not possible," Rodney said, ignoring Sheppard's question.

"That's what I said," McKay said. "Do the scan yourself. The results will be the same."

"Rodney, what the hell?" Sheppard said.

"McKay's right," Rodney said, tapping the surface of the tablet. He looked over at Sheppard. "It's a power drain. Something's sucking juice from the ZPM like a giant hoover. Oh, this is bad."

"I don't think it's because of the virus. Our program cleared that section of code already," Radek said, his face set in stubborn lines. "This does not make sense."

Rodney waved the tablet at him. "The defense system is waking up, Radek. I don't know how or why, but if it wakes up infected with a Wraith virus, we're toast."

"Rodney, what are our options?" Elizabeth had shown up, pale and frowning, her arms folded tightly.

"Let's see. Pull the defense computer or pull the ZPM," Rodney snapped. "Or let the defense system go online under Wraith control and kill us all. Those are our options. Smart vote is on the first, wouldn't you say?"

"Do it," Elizabeth said, to Rodney's back. He had already turned to shove a laptop into its case, tugging the strap across his chest. Behind him, he could hear Elizabeth on her headset, giving low-voiced orders regarding the evacuation of nonessential personnel and then a quick exchange with Teyla about the Athosians.

"McKay, you're with me," Rodney said. "Sheppard, could you--"

"I got your six, Rodney." Sheppard looked and sounded the same as always, calm, almost detached. Nothing about him gave away the fact that he and Rodney had been rolling all over each other just a few hours before. Rodney found it steadying somehow.

Radek gestured at his laptop. "I will keep working here. If I cannot stop the power drain entirely, I may be able to divert it from feeding into the defense system."

They headed towards the transporter, and McKay tapped in their destination. Within seconds, they were spilling out of the transporter into the computing section, down in the core levels of the city near the ZPM chamber.

"Where to?" Sheppard asked, scanning the corridor in the seemingly casual way of his that Rodney knew missed nothing.

Rodney nodded his head. "This way."

The room containing the defense computer was dim and chilly, although the lights brightened when they stepped to the central console. Rodney pulled out his laptop and started connecting it to the Ancient hardware.

"You couldn't do this from the control room?" Sheppard asked. He sounded more curious than anything else.

"It requires physical access," Rodney replied. "Part of the security protocols."

McKay moved over to one end of the console. "Hmm," he said and pressed his hand to a panel. A screen similar to the puddle jumpers' heads up display popped up.

Rodney gaped at him. "Hey, how did you do that? I've never seen it do that before." He could feel the frown take over his face. _He_ was the one who knew Atlantis best, not anyone else, not even this time-traveling doppelganger. Or so he'd always thought.

McKay didn't look away from the HUD, his eyes following the Ancient text that scrolled down the display. "I've got nearly five years on you in this, McKay. You learn a few things."

"Huh," Rodney said, an irritated release of air. Sheppard glanced over at him, and Rodney tried to keep his reaction off his face, but his was the poker face that lost a thousand bluffs.

Sheppard's mouth twitched, and his shoulders did that zen-like, "No worries" shrug that never failed to ratchet up Rodney's tension. He reached out to pat Rodney's shoulder, the mouth twitch blooming into a smile.

"What?" Rodney snapped, but he didn't give into his first impulse, to shrug off Sheppard's hand. He hunched over his laptop again.

"Nothing." All innocence, Sheppard lifted his arms slightly.

"Rodney." It was Radek, on Rodney's comm. "This is very weird."

"Could you be more specific, Radek?" Rodney asked. "'Weird' doesn't exactly tell me--"

Radek cut him off. "Rodney, I have not been able to shunt power from the defense system. It's doing things now. Very strange things. I'm picking up two, no three-- _hovno!_ \--now four EM pulses throughout the city. I think--"

A noise interrupted Radek's transmission, a loud shrill sound coming from McKay's section of console. A pulsating mass of colors rippled across the screen, a visual alert to complement the noise.

"Oh, shit," McKay said, his eyes darting over the display. He took a convulsive step back from the console, staring at his own hands, his mouth slanting down in a way that Rodney only ever saw in photos or in his own mirror. It gave him a sudden, weird jolt, just when he'd thought he was used to the sight, a jarring reminder that _yes, that's me_. It gave him a crawly feeling, made his skin feel strangely incomplete.

"Rodney? Rodney, I don't think the Wraith virus is causing the defense system to act this way." It was Radek again, but Rodney's attention was on McKay.

"Shit," McKay repeated.

"What is it?" Rodney and Sheppard asked at the same time, Rodney meeting Sheppard's harried glance with one his own.

McKay pointed a shaky finger at the display. "Quarantine protocol. We're infected with nanites."

*

_Jeez, not again_. A second later, Rodney realized how much the thought was a tribute to the Pegasus galaxy, that he could greet a report of microscopic robots infecting himself, his duplicate from the future, and his--whatever Sheppard was--with such a jaded response.

There was a confusing babble of voices, the noise penetrating his skull and making it hard to think. "Listen--" he started to say, but couldn't get a word in edgewise. "Shut up," he said louder, but again no one heard.

Rodney snatched at his headset, fiddling with it until he managed to start a feedback loop over the comm.

"Christ," Sheppard said, ripping his headset off to rub at his ear. Rodney ignored Sheppard's glare, making sure his comm was still open as he resettled the headset over his ear.

"Now that I have everyone's attention," he said, once silence reigned again, "It's obvious that the Wraith virus was a smoke screen, something to distract us while the nanites did their work. The defense system was never the danger; it's trying to contain the nanites. But it's only got enough power for these little sporadic EM pulses--"

McKay interrupted Rodney just then with a frantic combination of snapping and pointing. "The second ZPM." He smacked at his forehead, and hunched into himself, rocking in place. "Shit, I was stupid. How could I be so stupid?"

"McKay," Sheppard growled. "Cut it out."

McKay's eyes stayed shut, but he stopped the rocking movement. "We, we, we need to install the ZPM. Now, ASAP. Once there's sufficient power--"

"Just what I was coming to," Rodney cut in, nodding impatiently. "There'll be enough power to start up the defense system energy fields, to set up a city-wide anti-replicator pulse. Radek, we'll need to shut down as much of our Earth electronics as we can; these EM pulses could fry everything."

There was no answer. "Radek?" "Zelenka!" Rodney's voice overlapped with Sheppard's.

"Radek, are you there?" Rodney asked, the familiar fear bubbling up, dark and choking. _Please don't be dead, please don't be dead._ His sprained knee was throbbing in time to his heartbeat, and he realized that he was holding his breath.

A babbled mix of Czech and English came over the comm, and Rodney's heart started beating again. Heavy breathing followed, and then an audible swallow, and Rodney could picture Radek getting hold of himself, pushing his fear aside to form a coherent sentence. "Rodney. I see shadows. Something--in the corner of my eye. Something's here."

"Radek, get to Carson. It's the nanites--"

"I'm infected; I know that, Rodney," Radek snapped. "It's more than that, I fear. Just--be careful. Oh. _Oh, god_ \--" The words disintegrated into a scream, and then nothingness as the comm cut out.

"Radek," Rodney said uselessly, fingers clenching into the foam-covered cross pieces of his crutches. "Radek, answer me!" The only answer was silence.

Rodney scrubbed at his sweaty face with a sleeve, and then opened his eyes to see McKay backing away from them, grinding his hands together in a washing motion.

"He's dead, isn't he? Isn't he? Oh, god, I've killed him twice," McKay said in a toneless voice.

Rodney grabbed McKay's wrist, hard enough to grind the bones together. "Shut up, McKay. We don't know that."

He looked over at Sheppard, who was tapping at his headset. "Elizabeth? Carson?" After a pause, he tapped again, "Am I reaching anyone? Please respond."

"Oh, god, I failed again. You heard him. Dead, dead, they always end up dead."

Rodney's throat tightened up at the sound of McKay's voice, all lost and scared, but they didn't have time for sympathy right now. He shook McKay, hard. "Snap out of it, McKay. Radek's not dead, damn it. You need to snap out of it, or everyone really will end up dead again. Saving everyone's asses is our job, always has been, so start doing it!"

McKay opened his eyes, taking in a shaky breath.

"Radio's out," Sheppard said. "I'm not reaching anyone. McKay, I need you thinking, okay?"

McKay took in three more deep breaths and shook off Rodney's hand. "Right. I got it. I'm okay."

"Comm's down because of an EM pulse," Rodney said to Sheppard, thinking furiously. "It fried the headsets. We've got some hardened comm gear in the labs, if we can just get there."

He realized his hands were balled up tightly enough to hurt and forced himself to relax them. "Come on. Time's wasting."

*


	3. Chapter 3

  
*

"Can you see anything?" McKay asked Sheppard. They'd avoided the transporters, wary of nanite influence, and were only halfway to the labs. Crouched at the intersection of two hallways, they could hear the unmistakable _rat-tat-tat_ of a P90 echoing through the corridor. Sheppard was lying on the floor, carefully peering around the corner whenever there was a break in the bombardment.

"It's Dr. Viswanathan," Sheppard whispered back.

"Nita?" Rodney asked, startled. Nita Viswanathan was motherly and barely came up to Rodney's chin, and the image of her packing a P90 was just wrong, wrong, wrong. "She doesn't have the gene," he said. "The nanites are messing with her head."

Sheppard flinched, pulling back from the corner as the P90 started up again. "So she's infected, out of her mind, _and_ armed. Oh, joy."

"Come and get me, you fuckers."

Rodney blinked, taken aback. Nita was shouting, the words sounding incongruous in her refined British accent. "Great," he said in a shaky voice. He tried to find a more comfortable position, but it was hard, hunched as he was against the wall with one leg sticking straight out. "She thinks she's in _Die Hard_."

"We can't get around her without going halfway to the south tower," McKay whispered urgently. "We don't have time for this."

"I'll talk to her," Rodney heard himself say, and then he had to swallow. He'd been in enough tight situations by now to know that this could all play out really, really badly.

Sheppard hesitated, his eyes on Rodney's, but then he nodded. He moved back to give up the position by the corner to Rodney, who awkwardly scooched over, dragging his crutches with one hand.

"Careful. And keep your head low, if you need to look around," Sheppard whispered. He gave the top of Rodney's head a gentle smack as a reminder, causing Rodney to roll his eyes.

McKay was looking at them with an odd half-smile on his face, and Rodney had to roll his eyes _again_ , trying not to flush. Rodney pulled away from Sheppard and moved closer to the corner. "Nita, it's Rodney," he called out. Her immediate reaction wasn't promising, a rapid burst of fire. "Easy, easy."

When it stopped, he tried again, this time risking a peek around the corner. "Nita? Mind lowering the P90 for a second? You know how I like my skin intact."

"Rodney?" She'd half lowered her weapon and was giving him a wary look. At least she was still herself enough to be able to recognize him. "Rodney, what are you doing?" She sounded like she was about to cry. "You're not one of them. Those...things killed Lieutenant Webster. I found him. I've never seen someone die before. That poor, poor man."

Rodney's stomach dropped. Oh, god, definitely not herself, and it wasn't just the nanites. She'd arrived after their year of isolation, those impossible months of being on their own in Pegasus. She hadn't endured those crucible days of seeing friends die and being forced to carry on.

"Nita, I'm so sorry. But I'm not your enemy. You know me," he said, trying to sound persuasive, and wasn't it just like some cosmic Pegasus joke that Rodney McKay had ended up having to rely on his people skills. "You weren't here the first time we had to deal with this, but do you remember when Dr. Weir got so sick? The nanites? That's what's making you act this way. Nita, put the gun down. Please."

"Come out. Let me see you," she said, a stubborn frown crossing her face. "You're hiding because you're one of them."

"I'm hiding because you're _shooting_ at me," Rodney said, and he couldn't help that it came out sounding kind of pissy. "Lower the gun, and I'll come out," he offered. "You'll see I'm still me."

"No, Rodney, don't even think about it," Sheppard said, grabbing his bicep in a vise-like grip. "You are not going out there."

"What choice do we have?" asked Rodney in a fierce whisper.

"He's right," McKay said. "We're running out of time. No time, there's never enough time." At Rodney's hard, warning look, his mouth snapped shut, teeth clicking.

"I'll go, then," Sheppard said, gathering his feet underneath him to stand. Rodney shoved him back down.

"She barely knows you," Rodney said. "Don't be stupid."

"Rodney?" It was Nita again. Rodney poked his head out cautiously to see that she'd lowered the P90.

"Coming," he said, getting his good leg beneath him and pulling himself upright with a hand on Sheppard's shoulder.

Rodney moved out into the corridor, trying to look harmless. Considering his current state of gimpitude, it wasn't that much of a stretch, he thought grimly. "See? It's me, Nita. Rodney."

"Rodney," Nita said slowly, as if feeling the name on her tongue. "It _is_ you. Thank goodness."

Rodney thumped closer on his crutches, talking softly. "Nita, I want you to put the P90 down on the floor. You don't really need it." He could hear movement behind him, and Nita's eyes darted away from his. "Colonel Sheppard's with me. You know Colonel Sheppard. You told him once that he was 'alarmingly intelligent for a military man,' and he laughed, remember?"

She nodded, slowly, letting the P90 slide down the floor, and he sagged with a sigh of relief. He took a step back, half-turning towards Sheppard. "Everything's okay."

He was turning back towards Nita when he realized how wrong he was: everything was far from okay. From one moment to the next, her face changed. Her lips pulled into a grimace, and her eyes looked confused and terrified, and he could tell the instant she lost control.

She pulled her hand out of the pocket of her lab coat, and he saw that she was holding a 9mm.

"Rodney, down," Sheppard was shouting, and it was almost in slow motion that Rodney saw her level her aim behind him, at Sheppard. There was no moment of decision, no conscious thought, although perhaps some part of him decided she wouldn't really do it, that she might hesitate to shoot him, while she'd have no such compunction with Sheppard. Rodney just found himself doing it, stepping into her line of fire.

"John," he shouted, and Rodney'd never called him that before, but it was what came out of his mouth.

Everything happened at once then, overlapping in a confusing mix. The thunderous sound of Nita firing, a flare of pain as he put weight on his bad knee, shouting, and then the distinctive sound of Ronon's mutant pistol and a bright arc of energy striking Nita.

She collapsed to the floor, a puppet with her strings cut, and like switching off a temporal distortion field, time resumed its normal march. Rodney felt numb and a little queasy as he stared down at her. She looked dead, only the faint rise and fall of her chest proof that she still lived.

A hard smack on the back of his head snapped Rodney out of his absorption. "Ow," he said, and then an arm looped around his neck, tight enough to threaten his air.

"You ever do that again, and I'll kill you myself," Sheppard growled, right into Rodney's ear. Sheppard sounded deadly and dangerous and the hot breath tickling Rodney's skin made him shiver, suspended between fright and arousal. _Hmm, instant kink_ , was Rodney's confused thought.

Sheppard's arm tightened even more, interrupting Rodney's little psychosexual revelation. "Promise me," Sheppard said.

Rodney squeaked out a response. "Yes, that's quite the logical threat there, Sheppard."

"Rodney."

"Jeez, all right, all right. I promise, okay? You can let go now."

Sheppard's arm slid away, and when he spoke it was to Teyla and Ronon. "'Bout time you got here," he said, the false easy drawl that was completely at odds with the urgency of moments ago.

"Figured we'd have to save your ass, Sheppard," Ronon said, holstering his weapon with a little flourish. He knelt on the floor beside Nita to check her pulse.

"Trouble does seem to find you two with great regularity. You are lucky to have such sensible teammates," Teyla said dryly.

Rodney noticed what Teyla was carrying and blurted, "You must have raided the labs." To Sheppard, he said, "After Asuras, we rigged up a few anti-replicator guns of our own. Just in case. We knew the _Daedalus_ was supposed to bring a shipment of them, but we didn't feel like waiting, a little paranoid, I know--"

"It's not paranoia if they're actually out to get you, Rodney," Sheppard said. "Teyla, I thought you guys were at the settlement."

"You told us to go to the mainland. You did not order us to stay," Teyla said, a tiny smile curving her lips. "We returned when we first heard signs of trouble."

She hefted the weapon in her arms, and her smile got bigger and more feral. "Dr. Simpson gave us these. She was in the control room, helping Elizabeth and Miko organize a defense against the nanites."

"Radek?" Rodney asked, afraid to hear the answer.

"Under Beckett's care," Teyla said, resting a hand on his shoulder, when Rodney went a little weak in the knees. "He is alive, Rodney. Sheppard arrived just in time."

"Your Sheppard," Ronon said to McKay. "He's with them, in the control room. He's fine. Your team--they're all fine," Ronon added. He sounded almost tentative, making Rodney stare.

McKay's eyes closed for a second. "Best news I've had all day," he said, his voice a little shaky.

Teyla gestured, including Ronon and herself in the movement. "Our counterparts are armed with these weapons. They will secure as much of the city as they can."

"And I told _them_ to head to the Alpha site if things went south," Sheppard said. "It's mutiny in the ranks all over the place."

"'Mutiny'?" Rodney said. "Can I be Fletcher Christian?" Sheppard glared over at him, and he said, "Shutting up now."

Ronon carefully hefted Nita into his arms and then gave Sheppard a level stare. "Right now, I'm taking her to Beckett. Punish me later if you want."

"I can never tell when you're joking," Sheppard said to Ronon's departing back. He looked over and slapped Rodney's shoulder with the back of a hand. "And nobody else on my team is following my orders today. Why should Teyla and Ronon?"

"Please," Rodney said. "It wasn't that big a deal. Nita can't hit the side of a barn. Didn't even come close. Sheppard?"

Sheppard was no longer listening. He was staring at him, no, staring down at his arm. "What--?" Rodney started to say, but then Sheppard grabbed Rodney's left arm, tugging it out straight from where it was tucked up against the crutch. "Hey, what are you doing?"

"Shut up, Rodney." Sheppard poked a finger through a tear in the arm of Rodney's jacket, straight and fresh, not yet frayed. "Not even close, huh? You're bleeding, you idiot." His drawl stretched out soft and low, the way it got when he was really pissed.

"Is that--?" Rodney asked. "Oh, my god." Her shot had come right through his sleeve, cutting a shallow furrow in his arm. It burned painfully now that he was aware of it.

Sheppard ripped his sleeve. After a moment, Sheppard said, "It's just a graze. See, it's not bleeding that bad." It was Sheppard's version of soothing, Rodney supposed, but it didn't stop the blood draining from his face. He had to suck in a deep breath.

He turned his head away and was only vaguely aware of Sheppard mercilessly poking at it--cleaning it, his rational side supplied, but it still hurt like hell--and then a bandage being tied around it.

"Ow," he said weakly, but it was a poor effort on the Rodney McKay complaint scale. He couldn't help it: close calls were a fact of life in Atlantis, but it didn't stop him wanting to sit down somewhere with his head between his knees for the next few years or so.

The rising sense of urgency, the clock ticking too loudly, meant he had no time to spare for even a mini freak out, though.

The lights in the corridor flickered, and a few were glowing far brighter than normal. They all jumped when sparks shot from one fixture. "What the hell?" Sheppard asked.

Movement caught Rodney's eye, on the ceiling above them, and he looked up. It was like a swarm of cockroaches, spilling out from an air vent, a roiling mass of metallic chitin covering the wall two or three deep. _Oh, shit_. His stomach lurched, but he swallowed it down.

"Teyla, look out! Use the replicator gun." Teyla had the weapon in position as soon as Rodney opened his mouth. She fired and kept firing. She didn't stop firing, shooting at empty corridor even when there were no more of the replicator bugs.

Sheppard eased up behind her, touching her on the forearm. "Easy, Teyla. They're gone."

Teyla ceased firing, but didn't lower the weapon. She didn't move at all, frozen, staring straight ahead, and she looked almost as pale as she had on MI2-963, when she'd practically bled out all over Rodney and Sheppard.

"Teyla?" Sheppard said softly.

"The Asurans--" she said and stopped short. She shook off Sheppard's hand, heading down the corridor. She said a word that Rodney didn't recognize, and when she looked over at them she seemed embarrassed.

"What did you say?" he asked.

Her head ducked down, in what was for Teyla a strangely vulnerable gesture. "It's a child's word, a defense against bad dreams," she explained, and then fell silent, her mouth set in a frown.

Rodney crutched alongside her as fast as he could, stealing sideways glances at her. She ignored him, eyes straight ahead, and he knew there'd be no getting anything out of her for now. The team could get together with a cushion of alcohol, to joke, tell stories, to get her to talk. Later. _If we survive_ , the pessimistic voice at the back of his head whispered, but he'd learned to ignore it.

"We have to work faster," McKay said as they walked. "Much faster. They're trying to take control."

*

"The EM hardened radios are in there," Rodney said, waving to a cabinet. Teyla nodded, moving over to root around in the storage cabinet.

Rodney was heading over to the ZPM when the floor shifted beneath his feet. His crutches skidded on the floor, and he had to catch himself on one of the counters.

"Jesus," Sheppard said, followed by, "Did you feel that?"

"I felt something," Teyla said, staring at the floor suspiciously.

"Oh, this is not good," Rodney said. "Try the radio. See if you can reach the control room; find out what the hell is going on."

McKay's shoulders were hunched, his arms wrapped protectively around his chest. The look he shot Rodney was the patented McKay _don't be a moron_ glare.

"You know what's going on. It's the same thing that happened before," McKay said. "I didn't fix _anything_ , damn it."

"We don't know that, so shut up," Rodney snapped. "We're still alive; don't write us off yet."

Rodney turned his attention back to disconnecting the ZPM from the monitoring equipment. Tucking it back into its carry bag, he could hear one end of Sheppard's low-voiced and urgent comm exchange.

"Rodney," Sheppard said, shoving the bulky radio into his hand. "You need to hear this."

Rodney clicked the button. "McKay here."

"Rodney, thank god." It was Simpson, sounding harried. "It's the ballast tanks."

_Crap, McKay was right_ , Rodney thought. "How bad?"

"The inlet valves keep switching on, and I can't keep it locked down. We're already taking on water in three of the south ballast tanks. Atlantis is compensating for it so far, but if we start tilting too much, we're toast."

"Shit. They've certainly figured out where we're vulnerable. Lucky us, to get the damn Mensa nanites," Rodney said, his mind racing, juggling priorities. What needed to be done next, the ZPM or the ballast tanks, on the list of _do this right now or we all die_?

Unfortunately, it kept ending up a dead heat. He looked up and his eyes met McKay's, who'd been listening in on the radio conversation. They looked at each other for a long moment, and it was as close to actual telepathy as Rodney ever wanted to get. They nodded at each other.

"I've got the ballast tanks," McKay said. "The access tunnels are tight. You'll never manage it with that knee."

Rodney nodded again and relayed the plan to Simpson.

Rodney looked between Sheppard and Teyla, hesitating for a long, selfish moment. "John," he said, trying the name out, getting used to the feel of it. Sheppard looked over at him, startled.

He looked even more startled when Rodney grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him close, pressing their lips together. It was desperation, need, want, and, _jesus_ , even love, he admitted to himself, all mixed together.

"John," he said again when the kiss ended. Rodney looked him in the eyes, and he hoped John could read his _don't die on me, damn it_ look, because he couldn't bring himself to say it out loud.

He kept his eyes on John's, not looking over at McKay when he spoke to him. "Take John. You don't know what you're going to find; you might need his gene."

Rodney paused, his look a question at John. The answer was a faint nod, and Rodney continued. "I've got another replicator weapon in there," he said, waving at one of his workbenches. "I was planning to juice it up a little, just hadn't gotten around to it."

He settled the ZPM bag across his shoulder, and he forced his voice to sound steady when he said, "Teyla, looks like you and me and a ZPM. Just like our first date, huh?"

Teyla rolled her eyes at him, but she was smiling. "Let us hope you have learned to handle your weapon since then," she said.

"You wound me," Rodney said, clutching at his heart. He sobered, handing her a laptop bag. "Take this, would you? I'm kind of loaded down here."

John grabbed a radio for himself and then handed one to Teyla. "Stay in radio contact, okay? Don't do anything stupid."

He was looking at Rodney when he said that, which made Rodney bare his teeth at him. "Got it, try not to act Sheppard-like," he said.

John was frowning at him, and Rodney could feel one corner of his mouth curling up. He had no idea what his face was revealing, but John reached over to thump him on the shoulder. "You're an asshole, have I said that before?" he said.

Rodney shook his head. "No, you're the asshole."

"You're both assholes," McKay growled. "Now quit it before I have to go throw up."

"You will take your own advice, John," Teyla said solemnly. "And take care of Dr. McKay. As I will take care of Rodney."

*

"Teyla?"

"Shh."

She pushed him back against the wall, holding him steady when he stumbled over his own crutches. He peeked over her shoulder, breathing in the comfort of her smell, clean sweat over the scent of her shampoo. Everything looked still and eerie in the flickering lights, and Rodney tensed, holding his breath, but there was nothing. No movement, no nanites.

The gun's discharge startled a yelp out of him. Teyla was shooting, painting the walls and floor of the corridor, a cold frown on her face.

"Teyla, there's nothing there," he shouted, but she didn't stop. "Teyla, stop." He let the crutches drop to the floor and grabbed her arms, twisting them behind her in an armlock she herself had once shown him. "Teyla," he said right in her ear.

The next thing he knew he was being slammed against the wall, the breath knocked out of him by a hard fist to his solar plexus. He folded over, sliding dizzily down to the floor.

"Rodney? By the Ancestors, Rodney! Are you all right?" She sounded confused, as if she'd somehow missed the last few seconds of her punching the crap out of him.

She reached down to him, one hand headed toward his face. The flinch was instinctive, and she froze. "I did this," she said, sounding horrified. "Oh, Rodney." He looked up into her worried expression and managed a tight smile that felt more like a grimace.

He was finally getting his breath back. "Used to get worse from Eddie Zubricki, back in grade four," he said, because bravado was better than nothing. His voice sounded weak and breathless though, and he winced, gingerly touching the spot she'd punched. "Actually, that's a lie. You punch way harder than he did."

He stopped, swallowing. When he spoke again, he couldn't stop his voice from shaking. "You were shooting at nothing. I tried to stop you."

She tensed again, her head swiveled around as she scanned the corridor.

"Teyla, it's happening again," he said, reaching out with his good leg to poke her boot with his own. "Teyla."

He seemed to get through to her this time, although it took her a full minute to relax. She blew out a breath and crouched beside him, offering her hand. He hesitated, but finally took it, letting her haul him to his feet. She handed him his crutches, her face averted. "I am sorry, Rodney," she repeated, her voice low.

"Teyla, it's not your fault. You're seeing things, aren't you," he said, getting settled on the crutches. He pressed a hand onto his stomach as if he could hold in the ache.

He'd gone for gentle, but it came out sounding more scared than anything else. He couldn't help it; she was the sane, dependable one of the team, and this was freaking him out.

"I am fine," she said. She didn't sound fine, though, and her face looked grim even in profile.

"Teyla?" He waited her out, and she finally sighed. Lines of tension bracketed her mouth and eyes when she looked over at him. "Yes, Rodney, I am infected. But Elizabeth fought the nanites off with will alone. I have no lack of that."

"Well, she had Carson's help, too," Rodney pointed out. "We need to get you to the infirmary."

She cut him off with an impatient gesture. "And we will have the time for that after you install the ZPM, Rodney. I will not give in to hallucinations. If I concentrate, they go away. Eventually," she added at his pointed glance. "It is under control, as long as we finish this without further delay."

Teyla's radio chirped just as they started moving again. It was John. "How's it going up there, guys? We're in the maintenance tunnels. McKay's chest deep in a console already."

Teyla answered. "We are almost to the ZPM chamber, John. There have been no swarms so far."

"That's because," John paused, and there was the sound of heavy breathing and the discharge of his replicator weapon, "they all seem to be down here."

"Shit," Rodney said, snatching the radio out of Teyla's hand. The radio connection cut out, and Rodney was shouting into it. "John? Answer me, Sheppard."

In the background, he could hear Teyla's urgent, "John? Are you all right?"

The radio clicked again, and Rodney's heart resumed beating when he heard John's reply. "Yeah, yeah. We're good. I've gotta go, though. Kinda busy here." They could hear more weapon fire before the connection cut.

"He will be fine," Teyla said, and if the firmness of her tone was weakened by the doubt he saw in her eyes, well, that wasn't something either of them would mention.

*

Rodney should've known their good luck wouldn't last. He should've known that the nanite bugs weren't inexplicably ignoring them. Ignoring them, yes, inexplicably, no.

They'd found their swarm, waiting for them. The ZPM chamber was crawling with them, more than Rodney had ever imagined. He took an aborted step back in disgust. He couldn't help it: they pinged on deep, visceral fears of bugs and stings and anaphylaxis. They coated the walls and covered the floor, swirling around the room like a turbulent river, flowing across the floor, eddying around and onto the central ZPM column.

"You have got to be kidding me," he said.

Teyla stared at the swarm with revulsion on her face, tiny tremors running through her. His own flappable nature was currently flapping all over the place, so he was no help in the serenity department.

"They _are_ real this time." She didn't sound all that sure of it, although she'd managed to have the replicator gun in place faster than Rodney could blink. Her voice was tightly controlled, but Rodney could hear her composure cracking. At least the bugs were staying within the ZPM chamber, ignoring the two of them so far.

Rodney made a rude sound that threatened to turn into a hysterical hiccup. "Oh, they're real, all right," he said bitterly. "I can't even see the ZPM. I think, oh god, they're trying to eat through the casing."

She glanced over at him. "They wish to cause an explosion. Their final act of revenge against Atlantis, against us. This is what happened in Dr. McKay's timeline, isn't it?"

Her question reminded him once again that while Teyla was no scientist, she wasn't stupid, and she'd been working with the best physicist in two galaxies, thank you very much, for going on three years now. He nodded, a short, grim jerk of his head. "Probably."

"Rodney, when we enter the ZPM chamber, I am going to start shooting, and I will not stop," Teyla said grimly.

Rodney swallowed. "I'll be right behind you. Wait," he said, stopping her with a hand on her arm. "Put the laptop bag around my neck."

When Teyla gently looped the strap over his head, her eyes met his for a long moment. Rodney let himself lean into her for a second, feeding off her strength, gathering his nerve.

"Ready?" she whispered. At his nod, she moved, spraying the inside of the chamber with fire from her replicator weapon. The bugs kept coming, and kept coming, never ending waves of them, and she settled on clearing a path to the ZPM.

They moved with excruciating slowness toward the ZPM column, Teyla clearing a section of floor for them to move to. As they eased farther into the room, the bugs swirled between them and the door. They were a tiny island in a sea of bugs now, surrounded, but Rodney didn't let himself think about that.

He also didn't let himself wonder how long the charge in the replicator gun would last with such constant firing. _One step at a time_ , he thought, over and over, a hackneyed phrase if there ever was one, but it was the rhythm, the repetition that centered him, not the words.

"Get 'em, get 'em," Rodney shrieked at one point, because bugs were crawling up his boot, _oh, jesus_ , and Teyla shot them just in time.

"Is it safe to fire on the ZPM?" Teyla asked when they finally made it to the ZPM column.

"Yes," he said, and his certainty was a lie, because how the hell could he predict that, but it wasn't like they had any choices left.

So he held his breath when she fired on the ZPM column, but nothing happened, other than clearing the ZPM of bugs. No explosion, no sparking ruin.

"Oh, thank god," he muttered, and she must have heard the surprised relief in his voice. She shot him a startled glance, her lips pressing into a thin, angry line.

"Hurry," she said though gritted teeth.

He set the radio down on the counter attached to the central column, then pulled off the laptop bag and set it there as well. The ZPM bag came off next, and he could barely breathe as he fumbled it out of its covering. He slid it into place and waited. And waited. He hit it, once, twice, but that didn't help.

Teyla glanced over at him. "Keep firing," he said, sounding a little hysterical even to himself.

"What is wrong?" she asked, a frustrated shout, and Teyla losing her cool made Rodney's hands shake even more.

"Power levels," he said. Ripping into the laptop case, he cursed as a zipper got stuck for endless seconds. He opened and booted up the laptop and then connected it to the ZPM column. "I think."

"You _think_?" She was firing without pause, eyes darting, defending their spot by the ZPM column from all four sides.

"This'll tell me for sure," he snapped, impatiently waiting for the control program to open up.

"Okay, diagnostics, and...yes," he said, tapping at the screen. "The power levels are all out of whack. Let me just patch this--" He typed, sending the revised code to the ZPM column.

The second ZPM slipped into place, a reassuring glow lighting up its translucent surface. "There."

John's voice came over the radio, propped next to the laptop. "What's your status up there, Rodney?"

He snatched at the radio. "The other ZPM's in," he reported, dropping it to the counter to go back to typing, querying for the defense system subroutines, trying to jump start the anti-replicator pulse. "Where are you, damn it? Start the hell up."

"Rodney," Teyla shouted, a warning, and he glanced up to see a tidal wave of bugs, a mass taller than a person, surging towards them. As many bugs as Teyla's weapon destroyed, there were that many and more taking their place. "Rodney, I cannot hold them much longer--"

"Rodney? Rodney?" John's voice was getting more and more frantic over the radio. The bugs surged closer and closer, Teyla's weapon discharged again and again--and then everything disappeared in a blinding flash of white.

*

Everything was dim and blurry when he pried his eyes open, but someone caught his wrist when he tried to rub them. "You do not want to do that, Rodney."

"Teyla?" he asked. He squinted, but his vision didn't sharpen. His eyes felt parboiled, like they had during that nightmare of a skiing trip when he was ten. While his parents pretended to repair their wreck of a marriage, he'd ended up snow blind.

He tried to sit up and had to stifle a groan, slumping back to the floor. He spoke, and his voice sounded foreign, halting and weak. "What happened? Thought we...were dead."

Her chuckle sounded tired. "Obviously we are not. You didn't warn me that our success would lead to your laptop blowing up right in your face. It was--disconcerting. Rest easy, Rodney. Help is on the way."

It felt like he was still burning, hands, face, eyes, flames licking at his skin. He tried to bite back the moan, but it came out anyway.

"Rodney? You need to stay awake, Rodney."

Stupid. How stupid could he be, to blow himself up that way? "Didn't know... that would happen."

He should have, a voice in his head suggested dizzily, considering the effect even a small EM pulse had on their electronics.

Something tickled his ear and he realized someone was touching his hair, a touch so light it was barely there at all. "John?" he said.

"They are fine." Teyla's voice; he was here with Teyla, he reminded himself. "The radio is still working. They were very glad to hear my voice."

"My hands hurt," he said suddenly. They hurt worse than his eyes now, which was saying something. He was glad he was flat on his back, since the room had started to spin on him.

"I know," she said. "It won't be long now."

"I really hate nanites." He hadn't meant to say that aloud, and it came out sounding pretty silly.

"I know, Rodney," she said as the room started spinning faster. "So do I." He barely heard that part. Everything was drifting away from him, going dark and soft and painless.

*

"Jesus, fuck," John said as he came, rubbing himself off against Rodney's hip.

"Oh, yeah," Rodney sighed. Sex was better than Carson's pain killers, and exponentially more fun, although the bandages were a huge pain in the ass.

With both hands wrapped up like a midnight show mummy, Rodney hadn't been able to jerk John off, or even try the blowjob thing, which seemed less and less intimidating with each passing day.

"Nothing's wrong with my mouth," he'd protested when John turned down his offer.

"Trust me, you'll need your hands," John had soothed him, and then distracted him with some hot, sneaky groppage.

He also couldn't type, couldn't write legibly, and could barely feed himself. Using crutches was out of the question and he refused to use the wheelchair Carson tried to offer him, so walking was a slow and painful process.

Waking up at all had been a surprise. His last thought before everything went dark had been that all McKay's work on the time-traveling jumper had been for nothing, which would really have sucked, to fuck everything up even on the second time around.

At least the bandages didn't stop him from directing the clean up. There was nothing wrong with his voice, and the comm system was the first thing they'd repaired. Rodney directed a team that swept the city, scanning corridor by corridor for any remaining nanite bugs.

If someone taped his hands up for him, Rodney was even able to shower wearing plastic bags, which was one mercy. Another was John and regular sex and spectacular blowjobs, and the fact that John was generous with both the blowjobs and helping out with the shower situation.

Rodney knew in his bones just how lucky he was, how lucky they all were. His muscles had felt worse than after one of Ronon's thump-the-scientist sparring sessions, and his headache had been of post-dissertation defense celebration proportions, but his hands would eventually heal. He was alive. Atlantis had survived.

They'd survived. Three people dead, and everyone looked like death warmed over for days afterward.

Elizabeth wandered into the lab once at two-thirty in the morning. Rodney was there with Radek, obsessively triple-checking the computer system for nanite sabotage, sweating at how close they'd come to losing everything.

One look at her bruised eyes, and they'd dug up the flask from Radek's stash.

" _Na zdraví_ ," Radek muttered, and then they'd sipped in silence.

"To Webster and Jackson and Oliveira," she'd said finally, lifting the flask. And then, in a shaky voice, "I think I might like to sleep now."

She was looking at Radek, who reached out to touch her elbow. A wordless and fleeting glance passed between the two of them, and then Radek was saying something about helping her back to her quarters.

_Oh_ , Rodney thought. _Didn't see that coming._ His steps were extra unsteady when he stumbled his way to John's quarters.

*

Rodney slid onto the couch next to John, closer than he would sit if he were entirely sober, but John didn't pull away.

"How are the hands?" John asked, shifting on the couch so that he was facing Rodney. One of his hands slid along the back of the couch so that his fingers were just touching Rodney's shoulder. The contact was barely there and could have been accidental, but Rodney knew it wasn't.

"They're great," Rodney said, lifting the mug he had clutched between his bandaged hands. "I'm great."

"You look it," John said, amusement in his voice. "What are you drinking there?"

"Major Lorne has excellent taste in scotch," Rodney said expansively. He was feeling no pain. Carson would not approve of alcohol on top of his meds, but Rodney couldn't bring himself to get worked up about it.

He looked over at Ronon, snoring and sprawled face down on the couch next to theirs. "What was he drinking?"

John snorted. "Drinking, hell. He left the party with Brown and Parrish and came back looking baked. I bet he won't even have a hangover."

"Bastard," Rodney agreed, lifting his mug to toast their snoring teammate.

The party hadn't been planned, but put enough liquor together with another successful death-defying near miss for Atlantis, and things just happened. There was a frantic edge to it, whistling in the dark, the feel that merely living another day was an act of defiance.

Dr. Biro was playing tonsil hockey with Sergeant Trasker on another of the couches. Across the room, there was dancing. Most of it was inept, embarrassing flailing, but Teyla was doing a mildly pornographic sinuous shimmy with Miko.

Team McFly had squeezed onto the largest couch, body parts draped over each other like a human puppy pile. Rodney was pretty sure that someone--maybe several someones--was getting groped somewhere in there.

Rodney stared, and then turned to John to sum it up. "Pegasus makes you crazy."

"Yep," John said fondly. "I suppose it does."

The warm press of a hard thigh against his brought heat to Rodney's face. It was enough of a distraction that John easily snagged Rodney's mug. "I think I need some of that now," he said and tipped the mug back.

The couch dipped on Rodney's other side, and he turned to see a scowling McKay.

"They want my puddle jumper," McKay said without preamble.

"Huh?" Rodney asked, prompting John's, "Yeah, there went fifty IQ points."

"Shut up," Rodney said. "And give me back my mug."

McKay ignored the exchange. "SGC. They want to study the jumper. Back on Earth. Elizabeth just gave me the news."

"You're going to Earth?" Rodney asked, dismayed. He still wasn't too keen on having his doppelganger wandering around Atlantis, but he was even less keen on having McKay at SGC.

McKay frowned, his head twitching to one side in something just short of a shake. "Five years. We've been on our own for nearly five years now. Earth isn't home anymore, especially _this_ Earth."

His scowl deepening, McKay crossed his arms across his chest. "And SGC isn't touching my jumper. First of all, we sweated blood for that thing. And pardon me for not being entirely comfortable putting such powerful technology in SGC's hands."

"If _I_ had the next best thing to the TARDIS in two galaxies, I think I could come up with a hell of a better place to go than Earth," Rodney said, then clamped a hand over his mouth. "Oops, probably shouldn't be encouraging the whole mutiny thing, huh, Colonel?"

"You did say you wanted to be Fletcher Christian," John said mildly.

*

Later, much later that night, Rodney lay back in bed staring at the ceiling. "What time is it?"

John lifted his head from where he'd been lazily sucking a hickey on Rodney's collarbone. "Almost two," he said, closing his eyes as if in thought and then moving in for a nipple.

"Shit," Rodney said, sitting up so suddenly his sternum thumped against John's nose. "We'll be late."

"Ow," John said, gingerly touching his nose. "Late for what?"

"Get dressed," Rodney said. "And I'll show you."

The northeast pier was silent and dark and appeared deserted, until they turned a corner to find a flurry of activity around a puddle jumper.

"Who's there?" Ronon's deep voice rumbled the challenge.

"It's us, Ronon," Rodney said. "Don't shoot."

Moving closer, they could see the open rear of the jumper. Boxes of supplies crowded the interior, and McKay was fiddling with a control panel.

"They're leaving?" John didn't sound surprised.

"Yeah, we're leaving." Sheppard had come down the ramp to meet them. "We don't particularly want to go to Earth to be SGC guinea pigs. We did what we came to do."

"Saved our asses, you mean," John said. "Thanks for that, by the way." His tone was dry, but the look on his face said he meant it.

McKay had wandered over to stand next to Sheppard, close, in his space.

"Uh, thanks," Rodney said to McKay. He shrugged. "For the, the coming back and everything."

McKay nodded, a jerky spastic movement. "It's good now. It's fixed. We fixed it. It's what I had to do. Change things." Sheppard looked over at him and then looped an arm over McKay's shoulders, giving him a quick squeeze.

"Where you guys headed now?" Rodney asked. John shot him a sharp glance, and he hurriedly added, "No, don't tell me. That way I can be honest when SGC asks."

"Somewhere quiet. Somewhere to rest," Sheppard said, a tired smile on his face.

"I hear Acapulco is nice this time of year," John said. "McKay can make some sunscreen."

"You mock, but that stuff is bullet proof," Rodney said.

"We'll keep that in mind," Sheppard said. He glanced at his watch and then cleared his throat. He gestured back at the jumper, where Ronon and Teyla stood watching them. "Anyway, the shield window is open now. We should head out."

Sheppard and McKay were heading up the ramp when Rodney said, "Good luck. Not that I believe in luck, you know--"

Sheppard paused, turning his head. "I know. Good luck to you, too."

Rodney and John moved off to a safe distance to watch.

"Shield window?" John asked suddenly. "So they can't jump to hyperspace right here, like the TARDIS? I'm disappointed."

"No, doofus, that's just not safe," Rodney said, rolling his eyes. "We've got shield diagnostics scheduled for 0200. The shields are rock solid now with the new ZPM. They needed a shield-free window for takeoff."

Watching the jumper rise into the air above the pier, John asked, "Do you envy them?"

Rodney glanced over, but John kept looking up towards the jumper. "Envy them?" Rodney asked. "Why?"

"They have a fucking TARDIS, Rodney. They can go anywhere. Anytime. Before the Wraith, go meet Ancients, hell, go meet Albert Einstein."

Rodney moved in close, pinning John's head between bandaged hands. The kiss was wet, warm, a contented sort of kiss. John's mouth moved to the skin under Rodney's ear, drawing a shiver out of him. He thought of Radek and Elizabeth, Carson and Dr. Biro, and Major Lorne and all of Atlantis' people.

"No," Rodney said finally, running his hands up John's back, sliding under his jacket. His hands were frustratingly bandaged, but he could feel the heat of John's skin against his bare wrists. "I've got everything I want right here."


End file.
